Tourism loses 30% of its total labor force in four years

As Safir published today a report on the tourism sector in Lebanon, indicating a sharp drop of 64% in revenues this year compared to 2010, and that is according to Pierre Achkar, Head of the Hotel owners' syndicate. Achkar predicted that total revenues of the sector in 2014, will not exceed USD 2.5 billion, against USD 7 billion in 2010.
Achkar noted that insecurity in the country and the region has adversely affected the tourism sector, with many tourist establishments suffering from serious financial difficulties, and are no longer able to settle their electricity, water and municipality bills. He also revealed that the currently harsh situation has led to the layoff of a large number of employees in hotels and tourist establishments. Hence some 45 thousand workers and employees, from a total of 150 thousand employed in that sector (i.e. 30% of the total), have lost their work during the past four years. He also noted that the number of tourists has drastically dropped from 1.49 million in 2010 to some 987 thousand tourists in 2014, which represents a decline of 39.87%, according to data of the Ministry of Tourism. In contrast the Ministry revealed that the restaurant sector, which largely depends on local consumers, and that of travel which depends on Syrians, performed better than the hotel sector.
Source: Al-Safir 7 October 2014