Bahrain tourism will double by 2018

Manama : Bahrain is aiming to double its tourism by the end of 2018, says Minister of Commerce and Tourism Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani.

He was speaking to DT News on the sidelines of Arab Tourism Day programme at ARC-WH headquarters yesterday. He said the ultimate aim is to expand tourism to make it around seven per cent of the GDP.

“We want to create an industry that sounds attractive to visitors from GCC primarily, but expanding to other markets like China, India, Russia and Western Europe,” said the Minister.

He said that for the coming years the tourism strategy of Bahrain would be based on four fundamental pillars  – awareness, attraction, access and accommodation. Explaining them, he said that ‘awareness’ would be developed through new identity about Bahrain and spreading it around while ‘attraction’ was what Bahrain has to offer with permanent features and temporary events. The third is ‘access’ that involves the causeway, airport and the port for cruise-liner passengers. Last but not the least is to provide a variety of ‘accommodation’ facilities like hotels and service apartments.

The theme of this year’s Tourism Day is “Arab sites in danger” and this year is not the year of celebration, but the year of remembering those sites that were destroyed in the conflict zones in Syria and Iraq, said Shaikh Ibrahim of ARC-WH.

Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA) President Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa said ARC-WH is celebrating the Arab Tourism Day at a time when several world heritage sites in the region were going through difficult times and are under constant threat on a daily basis.

She added that they valued the visit of Taleb Rifai, the Secretary-General of United Nations’ World Tourism Organisation based in Madrid, who had always been supportive and advocate of all ARC-WH activities.  

Taleb Rifai told DT News that February 25 was declared Arab Tourism Day five years ago and it was an initiative that started from Bahrain and they were keen to come every year to Bahrain to celebrate this day.

Rifai said the day was very important this year because it had come under very challenging circumstances that the whole region and world beyond was passing through. He said the threat of much destruction to their cultural heritage was very much kept in their minds and this meeting was taking place against that background. He said they were trying as much as they could to raise awareness to the importance of preservation and the conservation and the protection of their cultural heritage,” he said.

“The biggest challenges are the security and the preservation challenges,” says Rifai, “We need to make sure that we keep our heritage intact and travel safe and seamless.”

Dana Firaz from Jordan said they were here to join voices for the protection and preservation of the Arab cultural heritage. “A lot of destruction is happening around the world and we are here to say ‘enough is enough’ to those who are engaged in such destructive activities,” she said.

She said that they strongly believed that the key to this is education and awareness.

Heba Aziz, Advisor at Bahrain Cultural Authority for cultural tourism remarked that 300,000 people visited different cultural sites in 2015 and out of them 48 per cent were foreign tourists. She said that Bahrain Fort alone received 171,000 visitors.   

Dr Farzana Al Ansari said that apart from her high social position, she was doing a tourist guide’s work as a freelancer once a week because Bahrain is so deep in civilisation and heritage and it had attracted her so much to adopt this profession.

She said that Bahrain is rich in touristic places and one of the unique countries that has every type of tourism and attractive places. She added that they needed to train the Bahrainis in this field as after petrol it is going to be the future of Bahrain.