Syria has always had vast tourism potential that it could never realise

The dramatic collapse of President Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal regime last December reignited hopes that the country could revitalise its tourism industry after over a decade of war. However, subsequent events have complicated efforts.

Earlier this year, local tour operators began work rebuilding Syria’s tourism industry. At the same time, experts started to restore Syria’s most iconic heritage sites - among them, the ancient city of Palmyra and the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader-era castle. By April, the sector started “showing slow signs of recovery”.

Syria’s new authorities, meanwhile, issued dress codes for women going to public beaches in June, recommending burkinis or “swimwear that covers more of the body” to uphold the “public’s interest”. Noticeably, the new rules do not apply to private beach clubs or “luxurious” venues.

However, it could be some time before Syria sees a sizable influx of tourists in light of domestic and regional crises.

In March, militias affiliated with the new government massacred Alawite civilians along the coast - long among Syria’s most popular tourism destinations. A Syrian government committee determined that these massacres killed over 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians. In April, the US Embassy in Syria warned of potential attacks targeting tourist areas.

In June, the 12-day Israel-Iran war briefly impacted regional tourism, including Syria. In July, violent sectarian clashes in southern Syria’s southern Suweida region killed at least 1,120 and displaced 128,000.

All these developments leave the outlook for this sector up in the air.

A review of the history of Syria's tourism consistently shows how domestic and regional developments like these have invariably stymied that sector’s vast potential. Even in the decades preceding the civil war, Syria repeatedly encountered difficulties getting off the ground despite considerable efforts.

Tourism was one of Syria’s primary sources of foreign exchange in the 1950s, alongside cotton, cereals, tobacco, and wool, but regional crises would invariably impact it.

American tourists were advised to vacate the country in 1958 after the government denounced America’s intervention in Lebanon. An estimated 75 Americans, mainly diplomats and businessmen, lived in Damascus at the time.

“The Lebanese crisis has also throttled Syria’s tourist trade,” read a report from that year. “The famous Damascus bazaars are empty. Merchants pounce on any foreign visitor like hungry crocodiles.”

Hotels right on top of mass graves 

In 1961, Palmyra experienced an increase in tourism, including from the US and Europe, with an estimated 600 reservations made at the Zenobia Hotel that spring alone.

During that decade, Syria relied on tourists heading to Jordan, which was much better at promoting tourism, or driving from Beirut to Damascus, often visiting for only a day or two. Syria began promoting tourism in 1965 and building a new airport in Damascus to rectify this.

Following the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Syria closed the country to tourists from the US, UK, and West Germany until 1969.

Syria’s new international airport opened in 1970, becoming the first in the region to feature runways capable of handling jumbo jets.

Hopes for peace returned soon after Syria and Israel fought another war in October 1973, and with them, prospects for a tourism boom. Syria began constructing new hotels and resorts along the coast, hoping to attract a million tourists annually.

“Syria is fortunate in one way that she was slow in developing tourism,” said Burhan Kassad Hassan, Syria’s deputy tourism minister, in 1974. “Our coastline is unspoiled and we can plan our resorts to keep it clean and lovely.”

A gambling casino built near Damascus International Airport lured free-spending tourists who had previously enjoyed gambling and other excesses in Beirut until Lebanon plunged into civil war in 1975.

But Syria didn’t become a popular tourist destination in that decade.

“Syria is not accustomed to tourism and Syrians pay as little or as much attention to tourists as their good natures see fit,” read an August 1979 Daily Telegraph report. “It is therefore a country ideal for the traveller tired of all-inclusive holidays.”

Tourism Minister Gerge Radwan told Reuters in 1981 that Syria aimed to double the number of tourists visiting to three million annually by 1985.

In February 1982, President Hafez al-Assad mercilessly crushed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the town of Hama, killing up to 40,000 people.

“Hama’s department of tourism has yet to catch up with ‘the events’ of February,” reported The Guardian in December 1982, noting the official tourist guidebook still described the Grand Mosque as Hama’s main attraction.

“Only if you display some foreknowledge does the tourist department say it is sorry, but - owing to ‘the events’ - the Grand Mosque has been destroyed and every other mosque the Guide Book mentions severely damaged and closed to visitors.”

In a depraved move, the regime permitted the construction of hotels right on top of the mass graves from that massacre.

All eyes on the West 

Syria aided Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, beginning an alliance that lasted until Assad’s December ousting. Iranian pilgrims became Syria’s primary source of tourist income in the 1980s as part of an oil-for-tourism scheme.

However, they could not make up for the comparable lack of Western visitors. “The Iranians don’t have any money to spend,” one rug merchant told AP in 1983.

The Shia pilgrim’s religiosity often put them at odds with Syria’s relatively secular society. Iranian tourists even clashed with Syrian police in Damascus airport in March 1983 after attempting to glue pictures of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini on the walls.

Syria still sought Western visitors.

“Despite the poor state of diplomatic relations between the United States and Syria, tourist visas are available from Syrian embassies, and Western visitors are treated properly - if not warmly - on arrival by passport control and customs officials,” reported the Boston Globe in March 1987.

“Once beyond these appendages of the police state, the visitor usually encounters nothing but goodwill and hospitality from Syrian shopkeepers, hoteliers, restaurateurs, and people on the street.”

Things started to look up for Syria’s tourism industry in the 1990s. Following the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1994, many believed Syria would follow.

“If you look at it from a business point of view, as a source of income, then I guess we have to put up with it!” Tareq Shallah, head of a Syrian travel organisation, told The Los Angeles Times when asked what he thought about the possibility of Israeli tourists visiting after a peace deal.

Syria insisted it would only have peace with Israel once it returned the Golan Heights seized in 1967. And even then, it would be a cold peace. “If Israel insists on a warm peace, then it will get no peace at all,” a former Syrian presidential advisor told AP in 1996. “We don’t need a new army to protect every Israeli tourist.”

Tourism as a tool to stabilise 

Syria experienced a tourism boom in 1995, attracting a few thousand Americans with affordable luxury hotels and tour packages.

“Americans are adored, especially on the coast,” said Zaher Imadi, Syria’s information tourist officer at the Syrian Embassy in Washington, in 1993. “There has not been one incident against one foreign tourist in Syria. Never.”

That tourist boom even led to worries that there weren’t enough hotel rooms to accommodate all visitors.

Still, Syria could not convince the US to remove it from the list of terrorist state sponsors. “Politics doesn’t affect tourism, but security does,” Syrian travel agent Ahmad Rafiz Hamza told Southam News in 1996.

By 1999, approximately 2 million tourists had visited Syria annually, many of them Iranian pilgrims. A manager of a Damascus travel agency told AP that only 200,000 of them earned Syria significant income.

After the 11 September 2001 attacks, Syria, now under Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, saw an opportunity to rebrand as a “terror-free zone”.

“There is nothing ironic about inviting tourists from the West to Syria in the present climate,” Syrian Tourism Minister Agha al-Kallaa told The Independent in 2002. “It is more necessary now as we need a sense of dialogue between Muslims and the West. Tourism is a tool which can be used to stabilize the world.”

What comes next? 

By 2004, Syria had received more Arab visitors than usual, accounting for 70 percent of the two million total, which The New York Times quipped made up for the loss of “skittish” American and European tourists.

Syria launched another marketing campaign targeting Westerners in 2006. “Western tourists see a high degree of security and tolerance between Muslims and Christians that surprises them and show how civilized this country is,” Syria’s foreign minister told Reuters that year.

In 2009, Syria earned $5.2 billion from international tourism and an additional $1.5 billion from domestic tourism.

In 2011, Syria opened its first casino in approximately four decades, shortly after the Arab Spring swept the region. Assad gambled “that gradual change can insulate his country from such tumult”.

The regime’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests that year saw Syria descend into the most brutal civil war the region had seen in a generation. It did not spare much of Syria’s rich heritage. Palmyra became the site of fighting and grisly executions by the Islamic State (IS).

The prospect of any foreign tourist - aside from intrepid war tourists entering without permission or visas, or those paid by the regime - visiting Syria was hard to conceive.

In a tone-deaf 2016 campaign, Assad’s tourism board released a video titled “Syria Always Beautiful” promoting the beautiful coast.

During those dark war years, Russia, which militarily propped up Assad, attempted to invest in Syria’s tourism. It signed a $59.7 deal to develop a four-star coastal tourism complex in 2022. Less than six months before Assad’s fall, his tourism minister announced that Russian investors would build two coastal holiday resorts.

Russia likely lost these investments in the new Syria. Additionally, Iranian citizens are now banned, indicating the decades of Iranian pilgrims making up a significant portion of Syria tourists are history.

AP noted this July that hotels near the Shia holy shrine of Sayyida Zeinab “that were once brimming with religious tourists” outside Damascus are now empty on the first annual Ashura day of mourning since Assad’s ouster.

What comes next is anyone’s guess. Neighbouring Iraq, similarly plagued by war and isolation in the recent past, has worked on revitalising tourism. Iraqi Kurdistan even explored promoting dark tourism. Syria could similarly transform places like Assad’s infamous Saydnaya Prison into museums.

Whatever ultimately happens, this history demonstrates how any creative efforts to invigorate this sector will almost certainly be met by significant, and at times insurmountable, internal and external hurdles.

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, who writes about Middle East affairs.

Follow him on Twitter: @pauliddon