David’s post is here, but also read the comments – they’re a fascinating glimpse into the travel blogging mindset.

After what I wrote there, Nathan Midgley followed up with this. Then a business journalist writing about the Visit Jordan campaign emailed me for my opinion. I thought I’d lay things out here.

Visit Jordan’s strategy has considerable merit.

Here are some sweeping generalisations for you. Jordan is a difficult destination. It’s hot and dusty, and a bit underdeveloped. It’s in a war zone. Not many people have been there – word of mouth doesn’t yield much info. You have to be tough to get around, and you have to like scrambling over ancient ruins, cuz there isn’t much else. The people are nice enough, but it’s not exactly a Land of Smiles. Women need to watch out. Tread carefully around cultural issues – people are easily offended. And watch your wallet.

Rubbish, isn’t it? But that’s where I think ordinary folk are coming from. They simply don’t know. For years, I’ve been bellyaching about the lack of information out there on Jordan.

So a campaign which delivers a large quantity of first-hand experiences, in text, pictures and video, to an audience already primed & softened up to the delights of travel makes sense. Over a year you could realistically expect mainstream media around the world to run perhaps 30 separate print features on travel to Jordan in total. Maybe 50. That’s a lot of eyeballs, sure, but it’s also a lot of dead ends. Bloggers can deliver hundreds of posts, as well as FB & Twitter coverage, that – I’m guessing – have way more trickle-down impact than MSM. By plugging closely into a SM-savvy market, you could potentially spark the holy grail for every tourist board – Positive Word of Mouth Worldwide – without having to spend millions on Incredible India branding or sumptuous Malaysia Truly Asia ads.

Nayef Al Fayez – former director of the Jordan Tourism Board (i.e. the overseas promotional arm) and now Minister of Tourism – is a smart guy. He travels constantly. He listens to people. He knows how Jordan is seen around the world.

And he knows that whereas half of Jordan’s tourism is package holidays booked through a tour operator, that leaves half which is effectively independent and unmeasurable. For a DMO to be able to talk directly to consumers and be believed has inestimable value.

So, aside from the danger of firehosing the web with Jordan content rather than dripfeeding under controlled conditions, JTB’s strategy is basically sound. The problems come, I’m afraid, from the bloggers.

Much has been made of the fact that blogging shatters the old journalism model, by allowing writers to be their own publishers – Alastair McKenzie, for instance, makes that point here.

That’s power – a lot of it. Blogs which attract tens of thousands of visitors, and bloggers who have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and/or Facebook, are as powerful as publishers. That’s why PRs and DMOs (and advertisers) are wooing them.

But they’re unedited. Unregulated. Untrained. Unqualified. Unaccountable.

That can be positive. They can publish things mainstream media wouldn’t touch – wacky ideas, marginal destinations, tangential encounters. But, let’s face it, they don’t. A handful of notable exceptions aside, travel bloggers just churn out the same old crud. They swan around like wide-eyed first-timers. There’s no insight. There’s no pre-trip research. There’s no post-trip reflection (heaven forbid: publish and move on). There’s no understanding of the economic strategies which brought them to the destination. There’s no sense of perspective. To put it bluntly, there’s no journalism. It’s all just words, words, words. Me, me, me. So we end up with the immortal “Jordan is the Canada of the Middle East“.

As David Whitley so memorably said, the last thing the web needs is more stuff on it.

Because they don’t know any different, bloggers are putty in the hands of the PRs…and it’s a short distance from that to the iambassador marketing programme embraced by Visit Jordan, and queried by Jeremy Head.

JTB’s tactics have let its strategy down. Quantity of material is the driving force, but quality has been underestimated. Quality really matters, if Jordan is to break out of its standard historical/cultural package tourism model and diversify into potentially lucrative niche markets. And, incidentally, those markets go beyond tourism: they have the ability to slowly – but clearly – define Jordan’s uniqueness to the world. This is soft power. It’s absolutely vital to the national interest.

But that won’t come if the country spends money hosting people who can only deliver “Jordan is the Canada of the Middle East”, regardless of how big the audience for that message is.

Bloggers are in a uniquely privileged position. Most of them, though, still view travel as holiday, rather than work, and they view themselves as being in a community rather than as being communicators. That’s not good enough. With power comes responsibility. Responsibility to the destination, sure, but above all to the readership. Show us something new.

Be better.

Disclaimer: In the last 12 months I went twice to Jordan. In the three years before that I was there 7 times. I’ll be there 3 or 4 times in 2012. Sometimes I’m hosted by the tourist board, sometimes I’m not. If you think that means I’m jealous because I wasn’t invited to take part in the 2011 blogger programme (thank heavens), good for you.

In 2007 and 2008, US outdoor adventure specialist David Landis and Israeli tourism entrepreneur Maoz Inon developed the Jesus Trail, a 65km walking route linking Nazareth – the town where Jesus grew up – to sites of pilgrimage around the Sea of Galilee. David and Maoz, with David’s wife Anna, created the trail from nothing, route-finding between points of interest, building relationships with people in villages along the way, encouraging them to create guesthouses and other support businesses for walkers, and negotiating with the SPNI land authorities to blaze the trail officially.

Nazareth is the largest Palestinian Arab city inside Israel, a focus for the substantial Arab population – both Muslim and Christian – in nearby towns and villages. The Jesus Trail deliberately passes through these, as well as through Jewish-Israeli and Druze communities in the area, on a village-to-village route which links specific New Testament locations with sites of historical interest from different periods and traditions.

While living in Nazareth, round the corner from Maoz’s award-winning Fauzi Azar Inn in the Old City, David and Anna wrote and photographed a Jesus Trail map and guidebook, self-published in the US in 2010. They developed an exemplary website for the trail which includes stage-by-stage route outlines, video and satellite imagery, GPS downloads, links to accommodation providers, even merchandising.

Nobody “owns” the trail: it’s a free, public, non-profit enterprise, feeding visitors – and, therefore, money – directly into rural communities. It’s founded on sustainable ideals, and promotes Leave No Trace principles. Everything is maintained by volunteers.

A pretty creditable effort, you’d've thought. Worthy of an award, perhaps? Or funding? Or maybe incorporation into Israel’s national tourism effort, to help bring more international visitors and so give those villages along the way a bit more of an economic boost?

Er, no. The Israeli government has its own agenda. Fuelled by the green-eyed monster.

Facts on the ground

Jesus Trail at Zippori

Newly announced this week is the “Gospel Trail“, a 63km route linking – yes – Nazareth with the Sea of Galilee, designed by the Ministry of Tourism for Christian visitors to be able to walk where Jesus walked, blah blah.

But the ministry has taken a rather more interventionist approach. Their not-exactly-subtle signage, which includes appropriate passages of scripture hacked into chunks of basalt stone (in case walkers venture out without a bible, presumably), stands propped up as giant cairns beside the path. The cairns are widely spaced just now, but even when the path is ready they’ll be placed only every 500m or so, making it impossible to follow the trail independently.

What’s far more concerning, though, is that the Gospel Trail has been deliberately routed away from Arab communities and sites of Islamic interest or Palestinian cultural relevance – and the official map identifies every other officially blazed path in the region, except the Jesus Trail. There’s an agenda at play.

The Jesus Trail starts at the Basilica of the Annunciation in the heart of Nazareth, leading through the souk and residential districts, heading into open country to pass through the Arab Muslim village of Mashhad (reputed birthplace of Jonah) to end for an overnight stay in the Arab Christian village of Cana (one of the places where Jesus is supposed to have turned water into wine).

By comparison, the Gospel Trail begins on Mt Precipice, a manicured tourist spot – and site of a 2009 papal mass – well outside Nazareth city centre, and proceeds on day one through forest planted by the Jewish National Fund, avoiding villages to end somewhere near Mt Tabor (unspecified). The first 30km of the trail has nowhere to refill water bottles, buy food or sleep.

Further along, after an overnight stop at the orthodox Jewish kibbutz of Lavi, the Jesus Trail visits the Druze holy site of Nabi Shuayb and then heads over Mt Arbel for panoramic views across the Sea of Galilee. The Gospel Trail bypasses Nabi Shuayb and follows existing valley-floor routes.

Perversely, the Gospel Trail even avoids sites of Christian interest: I’m told the first church on the trail comes at Km 59 – out of the 63km total route. The Jesus Trail passes 8 churches on Day One alone.

A land without people

With Israel’s global tourism reach and IGTO‘s marketing budget, the Gospel Trail will probably succeed. But, even before it’s got anywhere, concerns are being raised. Judith Sudilovsky, writing for the Catholic News Service, reports:

…retired Anglican Bishop Riah Abo el-Assal, retired Melkite Catholic Archbishop Pierre Mouallem and Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour said they were glad to see effort spent to improve Christian pilgrimage. They were less enthusiastic about side industries such as bike riding and horseback riding, which they said were not suited for a contemplative pilgrimage experience along the trail.

Even Israel’s tourism minister is already on the defensive. “Israel invests a lot of money in safeguarding the holy places of all religions,” he is quoted as saying (perhaps literally true, though an interesting follow-up question might ask in what proportions that money is allocated between sites from different religions. Anyway.). “Is it problematic,” he continued, “to use the culture and history of the [Nazareth/Galilee] area to promote tourism for the benefit of all nations? I don’t think so.”

I do. How about using the culture and history of the area to promote tourism for the benefit of the people who live there – Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Druze, Israeli and Palestinian? It’s theirs, after all. And in what way are “all nations” benefiting here? Surely “for the benefit of the Israeli government” would be more accurate?

But Mr Minister has bigger fish to fry.

According to Anna Landis, a tourism official has told her: “[The Jesus Trail] is dirty. I don’t want to show the face of Israel as…uh, you know…and I can’t fight the Arab cities to say ‘Listen, don’t throw your garbage outside.’ I’m the government, I don’t have to compete with anyone…but I can’t claim this is the best treatment you should give to pilgrims.”

Walking the walk

Government officials tend not to tread lightly. They know all about big-bus tourism, hosting Christian groups 50- or 100- or 200-strong, but do they know about developing sustainable rural tourism initiatives down at the grassroots? Have they chatted over tea with community leaders along the trail, explaining ideas and listening to concerns? Have they encouraged the growth of village B&Bs and local trail support initiatives? Have they walked similar trails – the Camino de Santiago, St Paul Trail, Abraham’s Path or Nativity Trail, to name only four – to find out how things are done elsewhere?

Or have they just sat in their big city offices and decided to graft their idea of religious tourism onto what they imagine is a blank countryside canvas?

I wonder.

But government officials also don’t think nimbly. Some time ago David, Maoz and Anna quietly bought gospeltrail.com, gospeltrail.co.il, gospeltrail.net and gospeltrail.org – and pointed them all at the Jesus Trail. Ha!

Market that, IGTO.

Disclosure: I first heard about the Jesus Trail in 2009, when I met David and Anna on a walk in southern Israel. I met Maoz soon after. Since then I’ve sat with them, eaten with them, talked with them and walked with them. I like them. They’re nice people, doing good work. Maybe that means this post is a load of biased, jealous, provocative, de-contextualised whingeing. Up to you to decide.

Note: I’m told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is running an article on the Gospel Trail tomorrow (4 Dec 2011). If it does, I’ll give a link in the comments below.

After their amazing work over almost thirty years in the Wadi Rum deserts of southern Jordan, and their expertise trailfinding long-distance paths in Palestine – and Tony’s record-breaking conquest of the Troll Wall, Europe’s tallest rock face, back in ’65 – plus countless more achievements in destinations from southwestern Morocco to northeastern India, this month sees the publication of their new guide to the Al Ayoun region of northern Jordan.

It’s another groundbreaking effort. No outsider (other than Taylor & Howard themselves, a few years ago) has explored this region in any detail – this is the first guide, in any language, to identify unwaymarked countryside routes known only to local shepherds and farmers.

Printed in Jordan – a nice boost for the local economy – the book is published by Vertebrate in the UK and is full colour throughout: the pictures of Al Ayoun’s amazingly lush, green and fertile countryside are gorgeous. 20 long-distance walking routes are covered in turn-by-turn detail, with GPS and maps. There are full accounts of rock climbing and, perhaps uniquely in Jordan, caving. Local knowledge is, of course, impeccable, with rural legends, archaeological history and deep understanding of Jordanian culture mixed with transport info and practical advice.

It’s a slender book – only 104 pages – but it signposts the way for how sustainable – and sustaining – tourism can develop, not only in Jordan but in any developing economy: not with one-off eco schemes or grand promotions, but by investing time, money and expertise in allowing pre-existing local knowledge to find expression, and by fostering the creation of outlets by which that knowledge can come to a wider audience, thereby stimulating economic (and emotional) investment from visitors.

If you’re even halfway interested in Middle East travel, buy the book.

The noble pursuit of travelling

For a flavour of what it’s like (the book, that is), here is the Dedication which Tony & Di print in full:

“There is much profit to be derived from seeing new lands and new houses, in seeing beautiful gardens and fields, in seeing different faces and coming across different languages and colours, and in witnessing the wonders of different countries.

The peace that one finds under the shade of large trees is unparalleled. Eating in the mosques, drinking from streams, and sleeping wherever one finds a place when night comes, these all instil affability and humbleness in a person. The traveller befriends all those whom he loves for God’s sake and he has no reason to flatter or to be artificial.

Add to these benefits all of the happiness that the traveller’s heart feels when he reaches his destination, and the thrill he experiences after having overcome all of the obstacles that were on his way.

If those who are averse to leaving their homelands knew all of this, they would learn that all of the individual pleasures of the world are combined in the noble pursuit of travelling. There is nothing more enjoyable to a traveller than the beautiful sights and the wonderful activities that are part of travelling through God’s wide earth.

And the non-traveller is deprived of all this.”

From ‘The Noble Scholar of Hadith’ by Ramhumuzi

Source: Don’t Be Sad, by Sheikh ‘Aaidh ibn Abdullah Al Qarni (2003)

Warning: rant follows

Now, pin back your ears for a rant – perhaps only of interest to those involved with Jordan. Feel free to stop reading now…

The book came about through Tony Howard & Di Taylor’s association with the Abraham’s Path Initiative (API), who have been working in Al Ayoun for several years to help local communities develop the Al Ayoun Trail (better coverage here), part of the wider Abraham’s Path running from Turkey and Syria through Jordan into Palestine.

API, Al Ayoun and all of these similar organisations or individuals are operating on shoestring budgets. I cannot imagine how much of their own time and resources Tony & Di have ploughed into Jordanian tourism over the decades – not the flashy promotional stuff, but solid, hardcore, tough work down at the grassroots, making connections, building bridges, raising consciousness, offering support, developing ideas. And yet, they told me, for want of a pittance they still struggled to get this book published.

It would not have appeared at all, so I understand, without the sponsorship of Jordanian entrepreneur Fadi Ghandour, founder of Amman-based global logistics firm Aramex. Tony mentioned to me that, after Fadi agreed to help, he demanded a unique form of payback: he asked Tony and Di to lead him on one – only one – walk through Al Ayoun, because he wanted to see the most beautiful parts of his own country – and there was no information, no map and no specialist guide able to take him out into the wilds.

That’s a special kind of sponsor. Fadi is to be congratulated for having the vision to back such a valuable project for Jordan.

His involvement puts to shame the entities and organisations further up the food chain who will benefit from this book, but who didn’t see fit to back it.

Hebron

In what (to my knowledge) is a world first, luxury tour operator Martin Randall Travel – known for running fully escorted cultural and historical tours on highbrow themes, chiefly to destinations in Europe – has announced a tour for March 2012 focused exclusively on Palestine.

Click here for tour details.

The eight-day tour’s key selling-point is that it remains inside Palestinian territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for its entire duration, bar the one-hour road journey to and from Tel Aviv airport. In the world of mainstream package travel, this is pretty much unique.

Many outbound tour operators in Britain and around the world offer Palestine add-ons to an Israel-based itinerary – usually dipping into Bethlehem and out again without staying overnight, sometimes also with a couple of hours in Jericho – and there are also politically-minded ‘alternative’ tours which visit West Bank hotspots to show and explain issues surrounding the conflict.

But I don’t know of any other fully bonded, accredited, mass-market tour company in Britain – or, come to that, the world – which treats Palestine as a destination of cultural and historical interest on its own merits, deserving of a complete one-country itinerary, without reference to Israel.

(If you do, please tell me in the comment section below – and give a link if you can.)

Well-judged

In keeping with the Martin Randall style, the tour stays in upscale luxury hotels throughout: four nights at the wonderful Bethlehem InterContinental Jacir Palace, two nights at the Jericho InterContinental and one night at the new Mövenpick Ramallah. Nothing left to chance! Similarly, the accompanying ‘expert lecturer’ is eminent Middle East historian and archaeologist Dr Felicity Cobbing.

But it’s the itinerary which stands out. It’s unusually well-judged, and remarkable for consistently delaying typical package-tour tickbox gratification.

Clients are in-country for a full 48 hours, sampling little-visited sites in open countryside and rugged desert, and seeing the suffering of Hebron at first hand, before finally being allowed to tour Palestine’s number one attraction, the always-crowded Church of the Nativity in central Bethlehem, late on Day 3. By then, they’ll feel like insiders amid the wide-eyed newcomers.

For Middle East tourism-watchers Day 4 is a landmark, going stubbornly against the near-universal flow by daytripping to Jerusalem from an overnight base in Bethlehem – again, special insight, special exclusivity.

Day 7 covers ground right across the West Bank, from Jericho (desert) to Sebastia (countryside) to Nablus (heritage city) to Ramallah (business capital) – ancient history mixed with a first-hand view of how contemporary politics is shaping the land and society. The local guide – if s/he’s worth his salt – will be working overtime here.

And Day 8 looks like it covers experiences about which very few other package tourists to Jerusalem have even the first inkling – the drive from Ramallah via the notorious Qalandia crossing to spend most of a day in East Jerusalem, without once setting foot over the Green Line.

I don’t often say this about package tour firms, but here goes – this is bold, intelligent, thoughtfully crafted and genuinely ground-breaking travel.

Local

And, at long last, there’s no pussy-footing around. The guides will be Palestinian. The transport will be Palestinian. The food, lodging, ambience and outlook will be Palestinian. A good chunk of money (and prestige) will remain within Palestine. The tour simply enters through Israel (since Palestine has no airport), but spends no time there – it’s like flying Ryanair to Vienna, where the plane happens to lands in Slovakia but the Austrian capital is only an hour’s drive away.

In short, it will be just like a historical/cultural tour to any other country in the world. Local.

Israel has hosted such tours for decades. Israeli tourism infrastructure is superb, Israeli tourist attractions world-class. But why refer to one country when you’re running a tour to another? Israel’s neighbour is emerging to stand alone, in its own spotlight, on its own terms. Martin Randall’s tour, Bradt’s guidebook, switched-on ground agents such as ATG and Siraj – who’ve created, for instance, Walk Palestine, Bike Palestine and JerusalemWilderness.com – as well as a growing grassroots infrastructure and eye-catching private-sector promotion all signal new confidence in Palestinian tourism.

Unaware

But Martin Randall haven’t exactly been shouting about their tour. I haven’t seen a press release – and you can’t even access details of the tour from the usual search facilities on the company’s own website, since (irony of ironies) Palestine is not listed as a destination country – and the “Israel & Palestine” option points at a different tour. You have to choose History or Archaeology from the Tour Theme menu to find it.

I wonder why. Do they not have the courage of their convictions?

Even the Palestinian tourism minister, when I mentioned this tour to her at the WTM travel trade fair in London recently, wasn’t aware of it.

I hope everyone knows now.

Disclosure: Although this post looks like one long advertorial, it isn’t. Martin Randall haven’t paid me a penny to write it; nobody has. I wrote it off my own bat, without reference to any third party, and I have no stake – financial or otherwise – in whether this tour succeeds or fails. The fact it exists at all is what interests me.

Suraida Nasser & her grandfather

A word of congratulation for the wonderful Fauzi Azar Inn, a guesthouse in the Old City of Nazareth, in northern Israel.

Already lauded by every guidebook out there (Lonely Planet author pick: “One of the highlights of a stay in the region.” Bradt: “By far the best midrange option in town.” Jesus Trail: “The perfect base…Best budget accommodation in the region.” Frommers: “Lots of atmosphere…friendly and personal” etc etc) – this week the Fauzi added a major new award to its trophy cabinet.

It was named global winner of the ‘Best Accommodation for Local Communities’ at the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards 2011, held during the annual World Travel Market trade event in London.

Can’t tell you how delighted I am for Suraida Nasser, Maoz Inon and everyone associated with the Fauzi. I’ve been there twice, most recently only a few weeks ago, researching a story for Britain’s Wanderlust magazine. It’s a truly inspiring place to stay.

And the story of how the inn came into being is a model example of how this kind of carefully thought-through, low-key, grassroots, community-focused tourism initiative can transform an entire city – not just shape the image of a place, but actually inject money into the local economy, refocus businesses citywide, drive growth and create jobs far beyond the limits of its own four walls.

As for responsible tourism, well, just take a look.

There’s a couple of other reasons to visit Nazareth, true – but the Fauzi brings it all together. Book well ahead to make sure you get a room at this particular inn.

Disclosure: nobody has paid me a penny to write this post. All from the heart.

UPDATE: Soon after posting, I found this nice little short video made by vlogger Daniel Baylis during his stay at the Fauzi in September (2011). Credit to him. Enjoy:

Thrilled and delighted this weekend to have another piece on BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondent, after ones earlier this year on Saudi Arabia and Cairo. This time I’m talking about Jerusalem’s new Light Rail.

Article transcript is here.

Audio is here.

And there’s a bit of background about how From Our Own Correspondent is put together here (8min audio).

Which makes me wonder why this doesn’t happen more around the Middle East. There was this idea for the Falafel Bus, running on a regular hop-on-hop-off route between points of touristic interest in Israel, Jordan and Egypt – but, as I heard from a hostel owner in Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago, it’s already folded after less than three months. I’m not surprised. Awful, awful name, transparently attempting to raise a smile by defining what unites Israel and its neighbours – which is a very Israeli mindset, incidentally: you don’t find Jordanians or Egyptians hunting for warm and fuzzy points of cultural commonality with Israel. Funny that.

But the idea itself was all wrong – too big, too complicated, too expensive – and if the accuracy of the truly execrable map is anything to go by, completely unreliable to boot.

But that’s not to say smaller-style initiatives couldn’t work. I was just in Palestine. A tourist bus route that went from Bethlehem checkpoint to Bethlehem, Jericho, Taybeh, Ramallah and back to Qalandia could potentially draw independent travellers out of Jerusalem to see more of the West Bank. It would save on taxis, for sure.

There was talk in Nazareth of a private-sector initiative emerging to encourage tourists to visit Jenin, perhaps as part of a joint hotel package in both cities. But that would be expensive. Independent travel, with community-run buses reliably linking either side of the Jalameh checkpoint, perhaps also serving the superb ancient site of Sebastia nearby, would be more attractive to more people.

And Jordan is, frankly, crying out for something like this. A friend I know recently made enquiries about starting a tourist bus circuit around Jordan to entice independent travellers arriving by easyJet – to no avail: the quantity of paperwork and capital funds required to obtain a commercial permit put him off.

The only example I’m aware of is run by entrepreneur Charl Al-Twal, owner of the (excellent) 3-star Mariam Hotel in Madaba. For some years now he’s offered a private bus for tourists between Madaba and Petra along the scenic King’s Highway – a long, slow route avoided by normal buses, which all follow the quicker but duller Desert Highway further east.

But public transport around Jordan to sites of tourist interest is virtually non-existent – major UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as Umm Ar-Rasas, Quseir Amra and Wadi Rum, are effectively impossible to reach unless you’re on a tour or have private transport.

The trouble is Jordanians – and most tourists to Jordan, who come from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries – aren’t interested in visiting Quseir Amra. Or Wadi Rum. And nobody is willing to go out on a limb to start a round-Jordan bus service anyway, in the hope that vivid marketing and a bit of PR will create a demand. So Amra (and others) remain desperately under-visited, Jordanian tourism remains stuck in a rut of seven-day package tours visiting all the same places, and innovation of Jordan’s national tourism product remains largely elusive. Someone, somewhere has to bite the bullet.

Looks like they’re trying in post-revolutionary South Sinai.

Rwanduz, Iraqi Kurdistan

A mini-roundup of some interesting news from the fringes of Middle East tourism.

Iraq

An interesting story by Gulf News mentions more than a million visitors a year to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, with the authorities targeting a Dubai-style five million by 2015.

My favourite line? “The recent surge in arrivals is a direct result of the international media promoting the area’s tourism potential.” So says the local tourism PR chief anyway. Finally there’s a place where travel writers are truly valued. Mind you, I’ve pitched Iraqi Kurdistan to several different editors here in Britain. All I get is tutting and tooth-sucking. Maybe it’s me.

Adding to the good news: Marriott is opening in Kurdistan, as is Hilton. There are signs of sustainable community-based nature tourism as well – and UK operator Undiscovered Destinations launches a new tour there next month.

Palestine

Talking of sustainable community-based tourism, take a look at this new website showcasing guesthouses in Palestine.

It’s interesting stuff, inevitably with a political tinge, but also comprising a bunch of good ideas for how to travel independently through the country. There’s an article about it here. The site is compiled by Bradt guide author Sarah Irving – for more on her, see below.

Bradt Guides

Speaking of which, props to Bradt. They are the only publisher in the world I can think of to have one guidebook to Israel, and another separate guidebook to Palestine (and may the mealy-mouthed ‘Palestinian Territories‘ henceforth be banished to history).

The new Bradt guide to Israel is written by Samantha Wilson. Despite a bit of leakage in the Jerusalem chapter and around Qumran, and (regrettably) a chapter on the Golan Heights, this is remarkable for sticking to its subject. Bethlehem is not covered. The book is a bit light on political perspectives, and the country map on page 2 is frankly bizarre (“Palestinian controlled territory”? “Area of Israeli settlement”?), but it’s a sound effort.

The Bradt guide to Palestine, by Sarah Irving, is classier still. The Israel book is 312 pages; Palestine – though a fraction of the size and with a fraction of the infrastructure – gets 326pp. I’ve seen pre-publication proofs; not the final book. Irving knows her stuff, and has covered the ground intimately. It is refreshing (inspiring? simply bloody wonderful?) to have the Green Line respected in a guidebook. After decades of one-way traffic in terms of travel priorities, travel narratives and travel coverage, Irving reverses the flow. Jerusalem coverage is East Jerusalem coverage. People are front-centre, with homestays featuring prominently and sustainable tourism emphasised. Irving gives informative first-hand accounts of places that not only don’t appear in other guidebooks, but which most other specialist writers (this one included) have never even heard of. I showed her account of Bethlehem to a friend who lives there: after one paragraph he was saying “I never knew that”.

What’s even more interesting is that the last chapter – titled “Palestinian Communities in Israel / Palestinians of 1948″ – includes coverage of Nazareth, the Golan (fascinating to compare the two books’ approach), Haifa and elsewhere. This is as much a guide to Palestinians as to Palestine. But it dodges the romantic, armchair-traveller feel of, say, Palestine: A Guide, thanks to an informed journalistic style which is partial but not tub-thumping, and a wealth of practical info on independent travel. It’s a breath of fresh air.

(The only guide on a par is Daniel Jacobs’ outstanding Rough Guide to Jerusalem, which has 300 pages on the city alone, scrupulously balanced, infinitely knowledgeable, quirkily readable. Add in Jacobs’ coverage of Tel Aviv, Bethlehem, Hebron, Masada, the Dead Sea and Jericho, and his book should be much better known than it is.)

Footnote: I haven’t seen Bradt Palestine’s colour maps yet.

Another footnote: Bradt have Lebanon on the way and their Eastern Turkey is already out. How soon before Iraqi Kurdistan?

Qatar

Not exactly tourism, but in case you thought everything in the Gulf was new – or commercialised – take a look at the fascinating oral history project Swalif. Click on some of the links to hear stories about life in Qatar before oil, before glitz, before malls, before countless luxury hotels. Arabic audio with English text.

Oman

A campaign late last year to push domestic tourism in Oman continues, with starry-eyed op-ed press articles still appearing. It’s all good. Local people travelling for pleasure within their own countries – such as in Lebanon, Israel or Saudi Arabia – fuels rural hospitality, helps diversify tourism economies, improves infrastructure and fosters innovation in non-commercial and/or nature-based attractions. The others in the region should look and learn.

Now, up steps Jordan – a poor country with few natural resources and a faltering economy. 85% of it is arid. Its once-thick forests were nearly all chopped down a hundred years ago to build the Hejaz Railway – which is now, itself, defunct. Today only 1% of Jordan’s land remains forested, mostly in the north around the highland market town of Ajloun (pictured here).

Ajloun is one of Jordan’s poorest regions, and has been the focus of rural development efforts for a decade. There are signs of success. A nature reserve, established on a remote hilltop, has proved popular, and has sparked the growth of village handicraft projects and community-led rural tourism. Nearby, campaigns by the environmental lobby managed to alter plans for a sprawling hotel complex in the midst of the forest.

Now, the government has announced plans to uproot hundreds of trees across a 300-acre site in the middle of Bergesh Forest in order to build a military academy. This represents a climb-down after the outcry at their initial plans to uproot thousands.

But the policy nonetheless appears to be illegal – and the nature lobby (no hippies: these are respected scientists and sober policy-makers with the ear of ministers) have consequently withdrawn their participation in an environmental assessment, which seems set to be a whitewash before it begins.

What’s going on? With vast expanses of empty land on which to build, why is Jordan so keen to fell its tiny acreage of surviving trees? Without wishing to be simplistic – and presuming, of course, that there is no element of corruption involved – could it be because the directors of planning are city people, who feel a bit lost when confronted by blank space on a map?

Jordan has a history of this. In 1985, when a new highway was being built east out of Amman, the planners were faced by virtually limitless open desert. Yet they plotted a dot-to-dot route which linked two ancient sites – just about the only two ancient sites out there. Why? Presumably because, well, there was nothing else on the map. And maybe because they were following ancient pre-existing tracks between desert wells. But lorries don’t need to stop for water every 50km.

The result is that these two magnificent 8th-century ‘desert castles’ – Qasr Harraneh and Qasr Amra, the latter a UNESCO World Heritage Site – now have a major highway rumbling directly past their walls, along with lines of pylons and other service infrastructure, effectively eliminating any sense of history or traditional heritage. Calls to rebuild the highway a mile or two away, with feeder roads to the ancient sites, have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Now we have the same kind of thinking again. If you’re Russia, Germany, Nicaragua or Thailand, perhaps chopping down a small forest to build a military base could be justified. If you’re Jordan, and you’re proposing to chop down virtually the only forest you’ve got left in the entire country simply because, well, there it is, it makes no sense whatsoever. Not economically, not militarily, not socially, and certainly not environmentally.

Who is advising the government – that is, His Majesty the King – to go ahead with this?

Is Jordan’s terrible blight – short-term expedience causing long-term degradation – about to recur at Bergesh?

Talisman Hotel, Damascus

Journalist Tom Gara recently wrote this article (registration required) for FT Tilt – a short piece which takes info from a blog post by Syria analyst Joshua Landis, which in turn digests 2008 figures from the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics. In summary:

• Syria’s entire hotel industry employs just 11,224 people.

This represents 0.05% of the Syrian population of 22.5 million. Even if you generously infer that each employee is a breadwinner in a family of six, and thus that hotel employment supports 66,000 people, that means hotel wages support 0.3% of Syrians. Compare that to Jordan, where tourism (as a whole) supports perhaps 7% of Jordanians (160,000 families, totalling roughly half a million people out of a national population under 7 million).

• Total salaries paid to hotel employees are just under two billion Syrian pounds.

Landis notes that this averages out to roughly £185/US$300 a month per employee. He also notes that living costs for an average Syrian family in an urban area are almost US$700 a month.

• Hotels in Syria have a combined revenue of $279 million – split as five-star hotels $154m, all others $125m.

Landis compares this to one single five-star hotel in Beirut, the Phoenicia, which had revenues of $88 million last year. You could also – very unfairly – compare to Qatar, where the five-star sector took as much in one quarter as Syria’s five-star sector took in a year. What these figures hide, incidentally, is Syria’s growing strength in small “boutique” heritage hotels, many converted from historic mansions in Damascus and Aleppo – these count as luxury for guests (and are priced accordingly) but I believe don’t qualify as five-star properties.

The main point? As is self-evident to anyone who’s travelled there, Syria’s tourism infrastructure is virtually non-existent.

Travel is good

Two conclusions to draw. First, the obvious one: tourism puts millions of dollars into government coffers (which, in Syria, means the pockets of Assad’s family and friends). That can be hard to swallow. The figures quoted above are from 2008, when Syria was starting to making novelty appearances on newspaper-inspired travel wish-lists as a trending destination, and when journalists were visiting and writing enthusiastically.

Some people refuse to visit countries which have governments they deem oppressive – China, Israel, Zimbabwe, say – specifically because they don’t want their money to support tyrants. Others visit anyway in (hopefully) full knowledge of the situation, writing off the financial aspect in favour of the idea that one-to-one contacts can benefit both hosts and guests, often intangibly. I’m in the latter camp.

Governments, by necessity, work with mainstream players in the tourism industry. The least harmful way of spending money on travel in a place with unpleasant rulers can often be by travelling independently, or using small companies. But, sometimes, even that is not possible. Going to a place to see it with your own eyes can, on occasion, trump wider political considerations. I’d say bankroll a tyrant, if you can then use your experience to positive effect. Travel is good.

Shrink-wrapped

Mosaic, Maarat al-Numan

The second conclusion is only a bit of dreaming about how tourism could work wonders for a democratic Syria. The kinds of problems Egypt and Tunisia are now facing, having to correct decades of endemic corruption in their tourism industries, wouldn’t exist. That’s not to say Syrian corruption isn’t equally bad – it is – but as the figures above show, there’s been virtually no tourism industry to corrupt. The slate wouldn’t be so much clean as still shrink-wrapped.

Syria also wouldn’t have to invest billions to try and implant a concept of tourism, as Qatar and the UAE have done. The concept is already in place. This is a worldly, cosmopolitan society. People understand travel. People also understand entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency, having struggled under authoritarian top-down incompetence for years. With a bit of encouragement, Syria could be a model of development in grassroots, community-led tourism.

Jordanian tourism has had a thirty-year jump start on Syria. But once the Syrian people get the government they deserve, it’s not hard to see Syria taking a generation or less to leapfrog its neighbour. The country is vast, with historical and cultural interest to keep a visitor occupied for weeks or months. Traditions of hospitality are ingrained. Topography is diverse. Flying times from Europe and the Gulf are short. It’s not pie in the sky to imagine Syrian holidays as popular as Turkish or Moroccan.

Syria could even copy Egypt (perhaps Portugal or Cyprus are more equitable models), and use its Mediterranean coastline – remote, underdeveloped, west-facing – to corral sun-seeking northern Europeans, flying them direct to the beach and out again. Damascus could be a Barcelona. Palmyra could be an Pompeii.

Dream over. That’s going to take a revolution.

For Rum background, click here, here, here and here.

Few outsiders know Wadi Rum as well as British climbers Tony Howard and Di Taylor. Since their first visit 27 years ago, Tony and Di have been exploring trekking paths and climbing routes all across these rugged landscapes in partnership with the Bedouin, bringing local knowledge to a global audience with unique sensitivity and insight. Several books have resulted, notably Treks and Climbs in Wadi Rum and its partner volume Jordan: Walks, Treks, Caves, Climbs and Canyons. Tony remains an authority on sustainable adventure tourism to Jordan and many other destinations – his publications list takes in Norway, Oman, England and Palestine. His most recent book, Troll Wall, describes his pioneering 1965 ascent of Europe’s tallest rock face. Tony returns to Wadi Rum every year, staying for weeks at a time with the Bedouin.

When the news of Rum’s UNESCO listing broke, I asked Tony if he would like to contribute an article for this website. I’m delighted he said yes. This is what he wrote:

Wadi Rum’s UNESCO World Heritage status has been a long time coming. Some may say it’s not come soon enough; others wonder if it should have happened at all. But Lawrence‘s “Rum the magnificent” is more than deserving – its natural and archaeological wonders are outstanding and both the Old Testament and the Holy Koran are believed to make reference to its culture.

Why then any concern? For many, the main worry is can the area and its people – the Bedouin – cope with the huge increase in tourism that the designation of World Heritage Site will bring? Despite the best efforts of Jordan’s RSCN to protect the core area, it already shows signs of overuse: one must accept that Rum village has grown out of all proportion – when we first arrived in 1984, only Bedouin tents and half a dozen houses surrounded Rum’s fort – but the valley-wide proliferation of vehicle tracks that now head south from the village to the tourism hotspots can hardly be described as welcome. Nor can the ever-increasing number of ‘tourist camps’ which already dot most of the valleys. It is, of course, good that as always the local people are taking the initiative, but while some of these camps are discreet and well managed, others are incongruous – and some are not even owned by Bedouin.

One wonders what type of accommodation the new Rum will have, and where, and how that new accommodation will impact on the site and the ongoing success of the existing Bedouin-run tourist camps.

At peak periods in Rum there are already too many tourists. What then, when the numbers double (as they could)? What effect will that have on the ambience of Rum, its quiet valleys and those people still trying to live their lives peaceably, in the desert? Will outsiders with no knowledge of Rum, its wild places, its culture, its tourism be drafted in as guides and drivers? What new rules and regulations will appear? Will the almost year-round mainstay of Rum’s sustainable tourism – the environmentally aware adventure tourists, trekkers and climbers enjoying what’s been dubbed the world’s best desert climbing area – be faced, as they are in Petra, with ill-considered and impossible demands to hire guides, when in truth guides are not needed by those with sufficient experience? Already Rum has insufficient guides for those visitors who do require them.

And will any of this benefit the area – and more importantly its people? If the evidence of the Wadi Rum Visitor Centre is anything to go by, the answer is probably not. Prior to its construction in 2004, the Bedouin of Rum could wait in their houses until it was their turn in the rota to drive tourists into the desert. Now all the drivers must go 7km to the Visitor Centre and sit around all day waiting for business. No shelter is provided for them. All these cars doing miles of pointless driving pumps unnecessary pollutants into the valley air every day.

So if Rum’s new World Heritage status is to protect the area and benefit its people, its culture and its visitors (both adventure tourists and mainstream tourists), a lot of work has to be done – and quickly. Let us hope that those who undertake this task will work fully with the local people to understand their needs – and the needs of all types of tourists.

Article is © Tony Howard, 27/06/2011. Author contact here.

Rant time, I’m afraid.

A few months ago in Tunisia, hundreds of people died and thousands more were injured during a popular revolution against a hated dictator. Now, it seems, the Tunisia tourism authorities regard all that as a subject for (literally) naked commercial exploitation.

The image in that BBC story shocks me, and makes me deeply angry. Have these people no ethics at all? Do they really think the brutality of a police state is worthy of a joke on a billboard?

They also apparently feel comfortable relating messages of torture and death to images of female nudity – and all in a bid simply to encourage Londoners to spend money feeling good.

It’s sick – and, in commercial terms, bone-headed. For the Tunisian tourist board to publicly allude to the fact that, barely six months ago, state security was trying to suppress popular demonstrations with beatings and killings (during and just before which, I might add, they willingly overlooked the country’s politics, as did everyone in tourism) only perpetuates the idea that there’s an undercurrent of violence.

But I’m fed up analysing puerile, ignorant, insensitive and counter-productive messages in travel advertising.

What the hell is wrong with this industry? Tourism matters to Tunisia, yes – but why, when tourism arrives, does dignity depart?

The ad exec quoted in the BBC story laughs off 23 years of state-sponsored torture and killing as “unfair”. Is she still in a job?

Her knuckle-headed “provocation” must have been approved at the highest levels – presumably by the director of the Tunisian National Tourist Office in the UK, perhaps also in Tunis (where tourism is part of the Ministry of Trade). Yet the minister was yesterday quoted as saying the country wants to use this year to diversify its tourism product away from package beach holidays. So why the stupid London ads?

Reaction on Twitter last night was swift – and negative. Creative director and copywriter Derek Payne said the ad agency “shouldn’t have recommended the ads in the first place“. Abi Dare, a British travel writer, said it was “a huge leap [too far]“. Jordanian economist Hazem Zureiqat was lost for words.

I’d be interested to know what ordinary Tunisians think.

Rosa damascena trigintipetala

If I was chuffed a fortnight ago to have my radio piece from Cairo aired on From Our Own Correspondent on BBC World Service, I’m even more chuffed today to have a follow-up piece aired so soon – and this time on the BBC’s domestic Radio 4 network as well.

For my schizophrenic tale from Saudi Arabia – half about the rose industry of Taif, half about a very unusual encounter – click here for audio (my bit begins at 0:18:15) and/or click here for the article transcript. The latter includes some very odd rewriting of pounds, pints, litres and dollars to suit the BBC’s internal guidelines on weights & measures: don’t blame me!

Incidentally, I changed key details in the airport meeting story to protect the (unknown) identity of the person involved. For the record, I did not meet him in an airport – not Taif airport and not any other airport – he did not say he was an accountant (he told me a different job title), he did not say he was from “a small town in the north” (he told me somewhere else) and he did not say he was returning home from a company meeting (he told me something else). Otherwise, in every respect the encounter was as I described it.

And I still don’t really know why he did what he did. The conversation was interesting but unremarkable until he showed me the crucifix. That was a pointlessly risky thing to do – unless he wanted to make a statement. Was that statement simply self-aggrandisement? I didn’t think so at the time. It rang true to me: in a few short minutes together he chose to reveal to me depths of emotional and personal complexity in his life that most people would never normally dream of sharing with strangers. Partly by telling, partly by implication, he exposed to me his relationships, his aspirations, his frustrations, his failures, his hopes – and his courage. For what? So that I should think worse of his country? So that I should think better of him? I don’t know.

And what prompted it? Was it the political upheavals elsewhere that were passing his country by? Was it something in our personal chemistry together that made him feel he wanted to confide in me? (I didn’t feel the same: I wouldn’t have dreamed of confiding such stuff in him…) Or was it just the anonymity, that he felt he could get something off his chest with impunity by speaking to a foreigner, someone who he may have figured was just passing through on business? Again, I don’t know.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. In 20-odd years travelling around the Middle East and the world I’ve never had anything remotely similar happen.

It makes me want to write a book.

The best-known is the Kingdom Tower, also known as the Potato Peeler – or the Vest – for, well, obvious visual reasons. It holds offices, malls, apartments, a hotel and a fancy restaurant at the top. People like to use it as a symbol of the glitziness and contemporary zip of Riyadh.

But Riyadh is not glitzy. It has precious little contemporary zip. In truth, the Kingdom Tower looks like a giant alien spaceship, plopped down in an ordinary city as if from some other planet.

The other skyscraper is the Faisaliah Centre, just down the street. It, too, holds offices, malls, apartments, a hotel and a fancy restaurant at the top, housed within a giant golden sphere which is ringed by a high-level viewing gallery.

For some visitors that’s pretty much all they see of Riyadh’s public spaces. Not their fault. I found this an incredibly difficult city to penetrate – blank, dour, unused to outsiders, reserved, wary. The street running alongside those skyscrapers is Olaya Street, famed as the ritziest address in Riyadh. I didn’t think it was ritzy at all. This is what it looks like – and that’s pretty much the extent of Riyadh’s public transport, too.

I took several walks through the poorer downtown commercial areas. These are short one-minute clips of what the streets looked and sounded like, shot on my phone.

This next video is the same sort of thing, starting from the Bab Al-Thumairi gateway, which used to look like this. The new arch across the street, where the video begins, caught my eye for its calligraphy – my pic below shows “There is no God but God” in Arabic.

Still life with office chair.

As across Saudi Arabia, everything stops at prayer time (roughly dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and dusk). During business hours, that means shops close for 15 or 20 minutes after each call to prayer: staff bring the shutters down. In the souk, shopkeepers simply hook a length of cloth around the front of their shop – see video below.

Then, after the sunset prayer, people – well, some people – head to the malls. This is a walk into the Faisaliah mall, within that big skyscraper I talked about at the top of this post.

Riyadh’s a hot, dry, bleak, desert city, right? Well, in parts. This girl was enjoying the greenery at one of the public parks in the south of Riyadh, alongside the Wadi Hanifa, one weekend afternoon.

Back to the world of tourism. Riyadh’s National Museum is outstanding, perhaps the finest museum in the entire Middle East. I spent hours there. This rather ghostly scene is the museum’s haj gallery, housing a model of Mecca, explanations about what the haj means and a history of the pilgrimage. I loved it.

I could wobble on about Riyadh’s history, about the politics of the place, the deprivation, the economic divisions, the beauty, the architecture, the velvety dry heat, the sustainable development, the unsustainable development… but I’m not going to. This is just a bit of travel blogging. Eye-candy.

Tell me what you think of it.

Reading Wallpaper’s brief article, it’s obvious – for what it’s worth – that they’ve never been to Wadi Rum. Unlike similar desert tourism hubs in, say, Oman or the UAE, Wadi Rum has no “five-star camps”. Staying there is a basic affair, either in vast, ramshackle tourist camps sleeping 150 people in army-style two-man canvas tents, pitched in orderly rows a few hundred metres off the road – or with bedouin guides in their own smaller, cosier camps in the deep desert, sporting rudimentary washing facilities and blankets under the stars. There is no “mixing [of] luxury travel with tribal customs”. The former doesn’t exist; the latter are homogenised and packaged for outsider consumption so as to be more or less indiscernible.

For years, since British climbers Di Taylor and Tony Howard introduced low-impact tourism to Wadi Rum after 1984, the bedouin and the Jordanian authorities have tussled over how to develop the area while maintaining its cultural and environmental integrity.

Now, perhaps, this scheme points a new way forward. Have a look at Wallpaper’s slideshow of images. All very striking. Especially this one – your private infinity pool.

It would be easy to decry the whole idea. A pool in the desert?! The global elite landing helicopters in Rum to spend a week being massaged and waited on hand & foot by Egyptian and Filipino lackeys?! Hacking huge chunks out of Rum’s epic mountainscape in order to accommodate “pure concrete forms” and “sheets of glass and water”?!

But I’m not going to decry it. I’m going to welcome it, with reservations. If it is placed discreetly, if it is environmentally sound, if it feeds local and global interest in imaginative, innovative tourism development in Wadi Rum (and Jordan as a whole) – and, above all, if it is managed so that it injects money into impoverished local communities in Jordan, then I’m all for it. If it is another Qasr Al Sarab or Zighy Bay – well, I’m not sure Jordan needs it.

Intriguingly, Wallpaper says the scheme is both “competition-winning” and “in development by a private client”. Since Princess Haya of Jordan married Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, I have heard speculation about investment by the Al-Maktoum in desert tourism in Wadi Rum. Similarly, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, emir of Abu Dhabi, has also been involved in Wadi Rum recently, donating oryx for a wildlife reintroduction programme there.

A scheme for tourist lodges on such a grand scale, employing a global ‘starchitect’, in a desert environment cherished by the bedu, bears the imprint of UAE influence… I wonder who that “private client” is. Anyone?

Cropped image © Tariq Dajani

This is a blog about travel, but every so often it’s nice to take five minutes out for a thing of beauty.

I came across the work of British-Jordanian-Palestinian photographer Tariq Dajani back in 2007, when he won First Prize in the International Color Awards for his images of Arabian horses. They blew me away. Have a look – there’s a slideshow of his images, on his own website, here.

His images of Arabian hunting falcons here are works of art. Extraordinary. They remind me of 18th-century British landscape painters – Gainsborough, or (appropriately for the horse theme) Stubbs: measured, insightful, emotional.

Take time on Dajani’s website. His images of Dubai are perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

Dajani’s horses were repurposed for a 2011 calendar by Saudi Aramco World – a cultural magazine focused on the Arab and Islamic worlds, published by Aramco (the Saudi state-owned oil company) out of their offices in the US. The calendar is downloadable for free here.

Tomorrow I leave for Saudi Arabia, on assignment for Aramco World. I talked to Dajani a couple of weeks ago in Amman and I was thrilled to learn that he might be photographing one of the stories I will be researching there, in Riyadh. A real privilege, if it happens (I hope it does).

Those horses. Wow.

Tunisia was amazing. Egypt is astounding. Bahrain boggles the imagination. Libya is off the scale. At the time of writing, none of those 4 revolutions is resolved. And there is also Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, even – staggeringly – Syria. Of a different character, but no less significant in their own way, are protests in Jordan and Oman, government handouts in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and even baby-steps towards parliamentary elections in the UAE. Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Israel may be fairly said to have their own concerns right now. That only leaves Qatar. Nuff said.

Anyone who’s been following me on Twitter will know that I’ve been trying to keep on top of the changing situations across the region day by day, which is a full-time job in itself. But this is a tourism blog, not a news digest – and I’ve held off from blogging travel titbits, since just about the only noteworthy tourism issues arising so far from these multiple revolutions have focused on less-than-gripping tales of Western governments’ efforts to repatriate their stranded citizens.

But the role of tourism in all this has increasingly felt rather seedy to me. Throughout the Egyptian revolution, governments and the travel industry kept on maintaining that Sharm and the Red Sea resorts were completely safe and unaffected by the upheavals in Cairo and around the rest of the country. Two British travel writers – who I won’t name, for their sakes – were flown into Sharm during the protests to ‘experience’ a luxury hotel. They did a bit of desert touring, tweeted about how peaceful it all was, and took some vox pops (which, unsurprisingly, were all about wanting to encourage tourists back – and this was before Mubarak had resigned).

That shocked me. It highlighted just how detached Egyptian tourism had become from Egyptian life. While people from all sectors of society, in all parts of the country, were engaging in serious political action – perhaps for the first time in their lives – all some Westerners seemed to care about was their ‘right’ to relax on the beach. The industrialised mass tourism which Sharm (and other places) specialise in filters virtually no money back to the communities which host it: a huge proportion of the cash spent on a typical Sharm holiday remains either outside Egypt altogether, or in the hands of inbound tourism conglomerates controlled by the kind of tycoons Mubarak’s regime favoured. People don’t go to Sharm, or Taba, or Hurghada, or El Gouna, or Marsa Alam, or any of Egypt’s other chiefly purpose-built seaside resorts in order to engage with Egyptian culture, or to enjoy a characteristically Egyptian beachfront scene. Most of these places didn’t even exist before mass tourism anyway; there often *is* no local “scene” other than tourism. People go because it’s sunny, cheap and you can fly there directly.

Is that bad? Well, since you’re asking me, yes it is bad – but some people like that sort of disconnect. What got my goat was that such disconnects enable Mr & Mrs Westerner to lie on sunloungers being served cocktails by Mr Egyptian, even while Mr Egyptian’s country is in flames as society is being completely reshaped by events a few hours’ drive away – and that Mr & Mrs Westerner are able to feel good about it because they are ‘supporting’ a vital plank of Egypt’s economy by not cancelling their holiday. Airlines and holiday firms kept on flying tourists into Egypt throughout the revolution.

That’s wrong. That’s a moral problem. If your tourism doesn’t allow your hosts to retain their dignity, you need to change your tourism. Dignity comes through income, sure. But nobody – in the UK anyway – seemed to relate industry calls for continued tourism to noses in troughs. At no point did the UK government advise its citizens not to go on holiday to Egypt (if it had done, then the rules on insurance reimbursement would have changed, whereupon the travel industry could have pulled out without losing money). I might be naive, but that is a failing of British foreign policy. Equally, the travel industry’s current reliance on Foreign Office travel advice benefits insurers (and reinsurers), not the industry – and certainly not holidaymakers.

Looking ahead, Bahrain and Libya don’t have anything like the same level of tourism – but the last couple of days have seen violent protests in Oman, which has a flourishing and important tourism sector. If the violence there escalates, will we see the same thing – Westerners holed up in luxury hotels, pretending all is normal, while Omanis try to reshape their society around them? It’s hard to tell. One complicating factor is that, unlike in Egypt, in Oman tourism is concentrated in the capital.

Globally, tourism is dangerously close to getting too big for its boots. It seems to enjoy being last out – only halting altogether under extreme duress – and, above all, being first back in, even while the last stones are being placed on fresh graves. That’s topsy-turvy. When people are trying to grasp political power previously denied to them, holidays become unimportant. They should stop. We should stop them.

The reality, though, isn’t quite so rosy. The common visa would only be issued for tourists travelling in groups. Independent travellers – that substantial bloc of price-conscious, culturally aware, potentially high-spending visitors – are being given the cold shoulder yet again.

And then, when you think about it, do visa issues actually hinder group tourism in these four countries at the moment? Probably not. Although Jordan’s tourism minister Zeid Goussous is quoted as saying a common visa would encourage more tourists from faraway countries such as Latin America, I’d suggest a far greater disincentive for people in Asia or the Americas contemplating a long-haul holiday in the Middle East might be the perceived threat of violence or terrorism, the unfamiliarity of the destination(s), the high cost of international travel and ground arrangements, and/or the necessity of taking 10-14 days’ holiday at a minimum to justify the long flight. Red tape on the border is rarely an issue for group tourists, who get all their paperwork handled by their tour company.

(By contrast, bureaucracy for independent travellers at Middle Eastern border crossings can be miserable – but independent travellers will not qualify for these common visas. An opportunity missed.)

A key question, unanswered in the news report, is how much the visa would cost. That could make the difference between successful stimulation of a semi-dormant market – and negligible returns on yet more diplomatic hot air.

Separately, I’d also suggest that people coming to the Levant from, specifically, Latin America would very likely want to be visiting the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth rather than lazing in Beirut or ballooning in Cappadocia – but Palestine and Israel are specifically excluded from these visa proposals.

So is this the wrong visa, for the wrong people, at the wrong time? No. Any moves to cut red tape must be welcomed – and it seems to me the whole Latin America thing is a red herring: this is, in truth, focused on tapping growing markets in India, China and East Asia for overseas leisure tourism.

Middle Eastern cooperation, in whatever form, is good. From such initiatives do greater visions take hold. Bring on the common visa.

Instead, I’m going to focus in on my own country’s unerring ability to miss the big picture in favour of pushing its own emotional buttons. It took literally weeks for the British media to even start reporting the fact that political feeling in Tunisia was rising against the dictatorship of Ben Ali. When they did, they reached for the cosy old familiarity of terms reflecting how the West likes to think of Eastern hotheads – terms like coup, rioters and violent rebellion. People were dying while campaigning for simple democracy but it was all just more bad news from the fringes: easy to ignore.

And, it seems, the tourism industry chose to ignore it. Even after it was clear to modestly informed onlookers that something big was happening in Tunisia, and that political revolution was in the air, the holiday companies were still flying plane-loads of tourists out for holidays in the sun. Even while protestors were being killed in the streets.

I call that irresponsible profiteering.

Then, when the crisis came to a head and the president fled the country, suddenly the media woke up, the news organizations parachuted in their special correspondents – and, true to form, “evacuated” British tourists started arriving back at UK airports for their 15 seconds of fame, blurting out tales of tanks and armed rioters, complaining how they’d lost money on their holiday and moaning about how scary it had been.

But, when Tunisia’s political collapse finally happened, it was not a surprise: this wasn’t a shock overnight event, like the Berlin Wall coming down. This had been brewing for weeks.

The British tourism industry stuck their heads in the sand and hoped it would all go away. They, in effect, put their staff and customers in mortal danger by continuing their operations in Tunisia, and also made a political decision to support the dictatorial status quo by not pulling out when the crackdown began. Will anybody hold them to account?

After this Tunisia will be a better place, its tourism industry will continue to thrive, and it’s most unlikely people will be put off returning there or anywhere else in the region (unless other regimes start toppling). The long-term ramifications will be negligible. The holiday companies will continue to benefit.

Small-minded Britons arriving home early should shut up moaning about losing their winter sunshine, and start congratulating the Tunisians on an amazing achievement. There’s a bigger picture here.

The researcher and I exchanged emails and had several long chats on the phone – she asking me about the logistics of travel across the Middle East and possible points of interest for a driving show, me bending her ear at length about how wonderful the region is and throwing lots of ideas at her about how and where the trip might run.

I can’t remember whether it was her or me who mentioned the idea of the show following the route of the Three Wise Men, travelling from “the East” to Bethlehem. But it was probably her. Almost certainly her. I mean, let’s face it, it must have been her. Must have been.

Anyway, so there were more emails, and more long phone calls (“I wondered if you would be free for a chat about the Golan Heights?” “Do you know if it’s possible to drive through the West Bank now?”), and I passed on specialist contacts in Jordan, in Palestine, I sent her links for theories of where the Three Wise Men originated – perhaps Iran, perhaps elsewhere – I explained what frankincense and myrrh are, and where they come from… the whole thing. We got on alright, I thought.

Perhaps I was naive in freely sharing knowledge without fixing terms, or without discussing the possibility of being involved in the show (or at least being acknowledged somehow).

Perhaps she thought I was doing it for the love of the Middle East, or because she thought images of Clarkson in the desert would instantly cause a soaring rise in sales of my Rough Guide to Jordan, thereby recompensing me through vastly increased royalty payments at no cost to the licence-fee payer.

Either way, the emails stopped in May, and I heard nothing more.

Then, this appeared: a Top Gear Christmas special, broadcast on 26th December, centred on a trip whereby Clarkson, Hammond and May follow the route of the Three Wise Men, travelling from “the East” (Iraq) to Bethlehem, via Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Israel, with attempted detours via Iran (not possible with a BBC crew), across the Syrian desert, and into the Golan Heights.

Iraqi Kurdistan came off rather well, with lots of epic scenery and enthusiasm about the friendliness of the people. Turkey was portrayed as shabby and dangerous. Syria seemed rather fun. Jordan was dismissed as a basket-case. Israel was glossed over, and Palestine didn’t exist – we saw nothing of Bethlehem. Top Gear’s not my favourite show, and I’m the wrong demographic, but all that burqa-wearing stuff struck me as particularly stupid.

And, of course, I got no credit. Perhaps I’m over-estimating my input, perhaps my info was utterly tangential, but I think that stinks. Sour grapes? Of course it’s sour grapes. I’m wallowing in sour grapes. They chewed me up and spat me out.

I’ll leave you with an email from me to the Top Gear researcher, dated 1st February 2010:

hi again
Struck me over weekend that this might also be of interest:
http://jerashchariots.com
Can just imagine the 3 of them racing, Ben Hur-style, around the Roman hippodrome…

On the right is a still frame, taken from the sequence where the 3 of them race, Ben Hur-style, around the Roman hippodrome at Jerash, Jordan.

Great idea, BBC.