Beirut tourism slows to trickle amid Arab unrest

All too often the centre of Middle East upheaval, Lebanon has taken a back seat as a wave of revolts surge through the region. But the small country is not immune to the tumult around it and tourism here has taken a hit. At the bottom of the Nahr al-Kalb valley, a trickle of tourists get almost-exclusive access to the Jeita Grotto, karstic limestone caves which stretch more than 10km into the mountains. Deep in the cave, small metal guideboats make their way noiselessly along a smooth underground river, rarely passing each other and never filled to capacity. The sound of droplets from giant stalactites hitting the water can be heard and the caves are lit up by blue and orange lights, specially adapted to emit virtually no heat to prevent mosses from growing in the caves and ruining the delicate stone structures. "We've had a very bad summer," a Jeita Grotto employee whispers, as if the quiet of the cave has awarded it a church-like respect. "During previous summers, we used to get 3,000 to 4,000 visitors a day to the caves, now it's more like 700." She said tourists from the Gulf and other Arab countries make up the majority of visitors. "But we've been having big problems." The biggest problem, this time, comes from neighbouring Syria where President Bashar al-Assad has been accused of killing at least 2,900 civilians in a military crackdown against pro-democracy protests which started in March. Around 600,000 Arab tourists drive into Lebanon yearly through Syria - the only country Lebanon shares an open border with as the small country is in a state of war with Israel. Cutting through Syria is a cheap option for most regional tourists and they can take the whole family for the summer. But the instability has shrunk tourist traffic through Syria, which accounts for a quarter of all tourist arrivals to Lebanon, and Arab arrivals on the Syrian-Lebanese border are down 90 percent. Employees at the grotto say 10 to 15 buses used to arrive each day, full of Arab tourists who had come through Syria. Now two to three buses arrive, they say, and there are no more queues for the underground boat rides. "Lebanon saw a 20 percent decrease in international arrivals for the first half of 2011,” said John Kester, who observes industry trends at the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). The second half of 2011 could be much worse as the situation in Syria has since escalated and data from Lebanon's summer high season has not been released. "No country is immune from what is happening in the surrounding region and most people have to travel overland [into Lebanon]," Kester said. "Lebanon is affected indirectly, not because of what is happening in the country itself."