The President of the Jordan Hotel Association, Abdul Hakim Al-Hindi, indicated that the damage to the tourism sector due to the Corona pandemic is very large, indicating that the losses of the Jordanian tourism sector are estimated at one billion dinars, while the global losses of the sector are estimated at 460 billion dollars.
During his participation in a symposium entitled: “Challenges facing the tourism sector in Jordan in light of the Corona pandemic, and possible solutions,” Al-Hindi stressed that the closure of tourist restaurants and cafes will cause great losses in these facilities, pointing out that no information has been received about the infection of any person or employee with Coronavirus in restaurants and cafes.
He stressed the importance of reactivating the Federation of Tourist Associations, which had been suspended for two and a half years, and giving precedence to the public interest over personal interest, indicating that if the federation had not stopped, the demands and proposals of the tourism sector and tourist associations would have been presented to the government easily and in an organized manner.
Al-Hindi explained that the number of registered and licensed hotel establishments in the Kingdom is 600, 90 of which are quarantined, pointing out that hotels with a star and two-star rating, and hotel apartments, have reached zero occupancy during Corona. Proposing some solutions that contribute to mitigating the damage to the tourism sector, such as providing soft loans, with a repayment period of no less than 10 years, with an interest of no more than 2 percent, and direct support from the government for tourist facilities to pay the salaries of their employees, and the participation of tourism and travel agencies in the return of Jordanian expatriates, expecting that the tourism sector needs 3 years to recover.
Source (Ad-Dustour Jordanian newspaper, Edited)
