The video ad starts off with a chirpy piano riff and sunny views of pine trees atop Lebanese mountains. Happy voices begin singing a remixed oldie in Arabic: “We’re going on a trip!”
All the while, a glamorous woman drives a Porsche 911 through sun-kissed orchards, followed by clips of beautiful young people drinking Lebanese Almaza beer and arak liquor on sparkling beaches.
Absent from the Lebanese Tourism Ministry’s summer 2024 campaign video: any hint of Tyre, south Lebanon’s ancient Phoenician port city now hemmed in by deadly Israeli bombs since a cross-border war ignited in October. Also notably absent is Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city and a medieval architectural marvel lined with Mamlouk and Crusader-era stone alleyways and a towering 12-century citadel.
“I mean, what is this!” exclaims Mira Minkara, a tour guide from Tripoli who leads walking tours of her home city.
Those tours have been leveling off in recent months.
No Sign of War
Mira walks Inkstick’s reporters along her usual tour route through Tripoli’s old city center one scorching afternoon in July. It’s a walk that includes fan-favorite historic sites as well as more personal spots, like her grandfather’s home behind the historic jewelry souk.
There is no sign of the war here among the stone alleyways, save for a few banners of Hamas military spokesperson Abu Obeida that have adorned the streets since Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza in October.
The peaceful quiet up here in Tripoli still isn’t offsetting what is unfolding to be a rough summer tourism season. The only tourists Inkstick encounters on that afternoon with Mira are a young Lebanese journalist bringing her friends — three Lebanese women and a woman from Iraqi Kurdistan — to the Mamlouk-era Hammam al-Abed bathhouse. It’s still functional, dozens of towels drying outside in the sun awaiting any visitors who might, hopefully, wander by.
Travel Down
For Lebanon, already in the midst of a historic economic crisis since 2019, summertime is a lifeline. It’s typically when foreign tourists visit and when Lebanese in the diaspora fly to Beirut in droves to spend time with family, see their ancestral villages and soak up the Mediterranean sun.
And they bring loads of cash with them. Last summer’s tourism revenue — $5.41 billion for the June to August season — made up nearly a third of the country’s GDP, according to local news outlet L’Orient Today.
People are afraid to go to the south.
– Pierre Achkar
There are signs that revenue is already stagnating this year, amid threats of a growing war. Arrivals at Lebanon’s sole international airport, now also feared to be under threat, fell by about 1.6% in the first six months of 2024, compared with that same time period in 2023, according to Sareen Amar, Head of Hotels and Accommodation at the Tourism Ministry. She said country-by-country data for airport arrivals were not available.
The losses for hotels are even worse. Occupancy rates are now 50% lower in Beirut than they were last summer, according to Pierre Achkar, head of Lebanon’s hotel owners syndicate. The group hasn’t even bothered counting losses in southern Lebanon, where rates are hotels are likely at just “five or 10%” occupancy, Achkar says.
“People are afraid to go to the south,” he adds. “Lebanon is in a war.”
“Zero Tourists”
Mahmud Ghazal knows this all too well. He is from a village outside of Tyre, located some 15 miles north of the border with Israeli territory.
His tours usually include the UNESCO-listed Phoenician and Roman necropolis sites at the entrance to the ancient city, once a major port from which Phoenician mariners set off across the Mediterranean with luxury goods and aims of long-distance travel. He even used to lead some Tourism Ministry-approved “political tours” near the Blue Line — a UN-run boundary line between Lebanon and Israeli-held territory.
Before Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and the cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel began in October, Mahmud ran “between two and three tours” of ancient Tyre every day, often with several dozen people at a time.
That volume has gone down, he says, sometimes to “zero tourists per day.” Above him, Israeli war planes break the sound barrier.
“Zero!” he exclaims, walking among the ancient ruins. Near him are two Lebanese couples taking selfies in bright dressy outfits. “Those types of groups don’t usually ask for a guide to learn about the site,” according to Mahmud.
The few foreigners who have made the trip to Tyre with Mahmud in recent months are from a random smattering of countries: a flight attendant from Iran, a tour group from the Ivory Coast, and a handful of people from the US and Argentina.
A second Israeli jet booms overhead, breaking the sound barrier. No apparent bombs here for now, but they’ve been pummeling the outskirts of Tyre since October, in some cases even striking within the city itself.
Another Side of Lebanon
Every Saturday during the summer, 27-year-old Samira Ezzo guides groups of Lebanese locals, diaspora and foreign tourists along what used to be Beirut’s “Green Line,” the civil war-era battlefront line that divided the city’s opposing eastern and western halves.
They skip the “usual” touristic sites in the capital city, like the National Museum and the American University of Beirut campus. Instead, on one five-hour “Green Line” walk this past June, the group of about 10 tourists follow Samira through bombed-out old apartment buildings destroyed by the Civil War, and do “urban exploration” in abandoned Ottoman-era stone mansions.
Among her clientele this particular day are a mother-daughter pair of Lebanese women visiting from Canada, a group of British diplomats and, of course, an Inkstick reporter. One of the Lebanese women grew up during the Civil War years that the tour is based around.
To her surprise, this summer Samira has had more tourists than summer 2023 — that’s despite the ongoing war, and despite raising her prices by $5.
Breaking Stereotypes
She says she attracts clients who are different from the typical “tourist,” which could be a boon for her — or at least prevent her from losing too many customers amid a war that’s likely stopping the average tourist from a summer trip to Lebanon.
Indeed, Samira rounds off her walking tour that Saturday in June with freshly grilled tawook kebabs on the side of the road in Khandaq al-Ghamiq, a working-class neighborhood in the center of Beirut that’s largely run by the Amal Movement — and that many other Lebanese tend to avoid.
She sits down with a sandwich when the shop owner insists that she eats.
Why take the few tourists this year who are up for a Beirut stroll into neighborhoods like this one? “So they can break the ice with stereotypes about such neighborhoods,” Samira says.
A Departure Ticket?
Still, the country is tense.
With about a month left of summer, there could be more cause for worry on the tourism front. Early Saturday evening, a bomb struck a packed soccer field in Majdal Shams, a Syrian town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The incident killed at least 12 people, including children.
Israel blamed Hezbollah, promising to escalate attacks on Lebanon. Hezbollah categorically denied responsibility.
Already, fears of retaliation have led to canceled flights to and from Beirut. A widely criticized, un-bylined Telegraph article last month cited unnamed “whistleblowers” at Lebanon’s only international airport as stating that the facility was a nexus for incoming Iranian arms, sparking fears that Israel could consider striking the airport should the conflict escalate. Lebanon’s government refuted the claims.
For some, the years-long crisis loop has simply become too much.
Mina Minkara, the Tripoli tour guide, drives into the city’s main traffic roundabout after a long walk through a hot, muggy day. Back in 2019, the spot was a hub for Lebanon’s countrywide anti-government protest movement, at the time seen as a moment of hope for a better future.
“We used to sit here in tents, we used to come down here every day,” she says. “I was hopeful for change.”
“Now? No, khalas [it’s over].” When she can, she still does tours for the few who show up. But she says she plans on emigrating as soon as she’s able to find a new job. “I just need a few years where there’s no war, there’s no plane flying above my head, where there’s no possibility of somebody shooting in the air and it lands on me.”
Still, she says, “I love my city.”
** All photos by João Sousa. Sousa is a photojournalist based in Lebanon and focused on social issues.