LONDON: Ryanair’s plan to launch new routes to Jordan is a “historic” move that could boost the kingdom’s tourism to pre-Arab Spring levels.
Industry providers welcomed Sunday’s announcement that the low-cost carrier will roll out 14 new routes to Jordan in 2018, bringing around 500,000 customers to the country a year and opening up new source markets from Europe.
“We put a lot of time and energy into bringing Ryanair to Jordan; this has been 10 years in the making,” said Mahmoud Freihat, area marketing manager at the Jordan Tourism Board (JTB), which is responsible for marketing the country abroad.
“It’s a big investment from Ryanair. It shows their trust in Jordan,” he added.
By the end of 2018, Amman will be connected to 10 new cities, including Milan, Budapest, Bologna, Krakow, Bucharest, Paphos, Prague, Brussels, Vilnius, and Warsaw; with a further four flights to Aqaba from Athens, Rome, Cologne and Sofia.
British taxes priced out a Ryanair flight to the UK but the government is looking at other low-cost carriers in the region to fill the gap, Freihat said.
The routes tap into the lucrative low-cost carrier market, opening the country up to a new sector of travelers.
“Low-cost airlines in Europe have changed the way people travel; people look at where they fly and go there,” said Suleiman Farajat, deputy chief commissioner for the Petra Development and Tourism Regional Authority.
Commentators pointed to a huge gap in the market in Jordan, where low-cost carrier penetration is approximately 10 percent, compared to Morocco, another MENA country on the Mediterranean, where it’s around 40 percent.
In the past, easyJet operated flights between Europe and Jordan but pulled out in 2014. Back then, Farajat said, few international tourists were coming to the region, but now, “Demand is high and it’s the right time.”
Tourism in Jordan is on the mend following a significant setback in the years after the Arab Spring. Figures released by the Central Bank of Jordan showed a 12.5 percent increase in 2017 tourism receipts.
Visitors numbers dwindled between 2011 and 2015, despite Jordan remaining stable throughout the conflict in neighbouring Syria.
However, an attack by armed gunmen on a tourism site in the city of Karak in Dec. 2016 killed 10 people, including a Canadian tourist, and left dozens injured.
“Improvement in air connectivity definitely has a positive impact on destinations’ tourism industry, as it increases tourist arrivals, spending and job creation,” World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) Research Director, Rochelle Turner told Arab News,
“Jordan has a wealth of amazing cultural and natural treasures for visitors to admire. The launch of new air routes to Jordan is good news for the country’s economy.”
According to the WTTC, travel and tourism’s total contribution to GDP was nearly 20 percent in 2016 and is forecast to rise to almost 23 percent by 2027.
“In the last two years tourism has really started to pick up - 2017 was a really good year,” Farajat, said, adding that the challenge now is to enhance tourism infrastructure to meet rising demand.
The new routes to Amman and Aqaba will bring a “tremendous increase” in visitors to Petra, he added, explaining that Jordan’s most famous attraction acts as a “barometer” for the sector.
About 620,000 tourists visited Petra in 2017, a 34 percent increase on the previous year. This year, Farajat hopes the numbers will climb to 800,000. “The benchmark is 2010 when we had one million,” he said.
Muna Haddad, managing director at Baraka, a sustainable tourism company in Jordan, is anticipating a “broader base” of visitors. “This is definitely going to expand the range of groups interested in visiting Jordan.
“Other low-cost carriers have been in Jordan before and closed down … having a government serious about creating a hospitable environment for them is really historic.”
Industry insiders have credited Jordan’s tourism minister Lina Mazhar Annab with breaking through the impasse to finalise the deal, with incentives for Ryanair, such as exemption from certain taxes and reduced landing fees.
In a statement announcing the launch, Annab said: “Ryanair’s decision to fly to Jordan sends a loud and clear message about the diversity and the untapped potential of Jordan’s tourism product. It also shows confidence in the tourism industry in Jordan, which has witnessed double-digit growth in the past year.”
Freihat said more routes will likely be added in the years ahead. “We really believe this puts Jordan in the middle of Europe,” he added anticipating that the new flights to Aqaba, a sleepy airport in south, will open up new options for visitors to Jordan’s major sites.
With Petra just an hour and a half away, Wadi Rum 45 minutes and the Dead Sea an hour and a half, he anticipates Europeans coming on long weekends to see the sites, bringing more business to single destinations and benefitting communities reliant on tourism across the country.
“We are now able to make the Kingdom more accessible to a broader segment of potential tourists … whose impact on the local economy will be substantial on every level of the tourism sector supply-chain,” Managing Director of the Jordan Tourism Board Abed Al-Razzaq Arabiyat said in a statement.
![]()
Budget flights to Europe will breathe new life into Jordan tourism
Budget flights to Europe will breathe new life into Jordan tourism
Syrian army extends hold over north Syria, Kurds report clashes
DEIR HAFER: Syria’s army has seized swathes of the country’s north, dislodging Kurdish forces from territory over which they held effective autonomy for more than a decade.
The government appeared to be extending its grip on Kurdish-run areas after President Ahmed Al-Sharaa issued a decree declaring Kurdish a “national language” and granting the minority group official recognition.
The Kurds have said Friday’s announcement fell short of their aspirations, while the implementation of a March deal — intended to see Kurdish forces integrated into the state — has stalled.
Government troops drove Kurdish forces from two Aleppo neighborhoods last week and on Saturday took control of an area east of the city.
On Sunday, the government announced the capture of Tabqa, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of Raqqa.
“The Syrian army controls the strategic city of Tabqa in the Raqqa countryside, including the Euphrates Dam, which is the largest dam in Syria,” said Information Minister Hamza Almustafa, according to the official SANA news agency.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), however, said they had “taken the necessary measures to restore security and stability” in Tabqa.
In Deir Hafer, some 50 kilometers east of Aleppo city, an AFP correspondent saw several SDF fighters leaving the town and residents returning under heavy army presence.
Syria’s army said four soldiers had been killed, while Kurdish forces reported several fighters dead. Both sides traded blame for violating a withdrawal deal.
Kurdish authorities ordered a curfew in the Raqqa region after the army designated a swathe of territory southwest of the Euphrates River a “closed military zone,” warning it would target what it said were several military sites.
The SANA news agency reported Sunday that the SDF destroyed two bridges over the Euphrates in Raqqa city, which lies on the eastern bank of the river.
Raqqa’s media directorate separately accused the SDF of cutting off Raqqa city’s water supply by blowing up the main water pipes.
Deir Ezzor governor Ghassan Alsayed Ahmed said on social media that the SDF fired “rocket projectiles” at neighborhoods in government-controlled territories in the city center of Deir Ezzor, Al-Mayadin, and other areas.
The SDF said “factions affiliated with the Damascus government attacked our forces’ positions” and caused clashes in several towns on the east bank of the Euphrates, opposite Al-Mayadin and which lie between Deir Ezzor and the Iraqi border.
- ‘Betrayed’ -
On Friday, Syrian Kurdish leader and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi had committed to redeploying his forces from outside Aleppo to east of the Euphrates.
But the SDF said Saturday that Damascus had “violated the recent agreements and betrayed our forces,” with clashes erupting with troops south of Tabqa.
The army urged the SDF to “immediately fulfil its announced commitments and fully withdraw” east of the river.
The SDF controls swathes of Syria’s oil?rich north and northeast, areas captured during the civil war and the fight against the Daesh group over the past decade.
US envoy Tom Barrack met Abdi in Irbil on Saturday, the presidency of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region said.
While Washington has long supported Kurdish forces, it has also backed Syria’s new authorities.
US Central Command on Saturday urged Syrian government forces “to cease any offensive actions in the areas between Aleppo and al?Tabqa.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, also called for de-escalation and a ceasefire.
- Presidential decree -
Sharaa’s announcement on Friday marked the first formal recognition of Kurdish rights since Syria’s independence in 1946.
The decree stated that Kurds are “an essential and integral part” of Syria, where they have suffered decades of marginalization.
It made Kurdish a “national language” and granted nationality to all Kurds — around 20 percent of whom were stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.
The Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast said the decree was “a first step” but “does not satisfy the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people.
In Qamishli, the main Kurdish city in the country’s northeast, Shebal Ali, 35, told AFP that “we want constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people’s rights.”
Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the decree “offers cultural concessions while consolidating military control.”
“It does not address the northeast’s calls for self-governance,” he said.
Also Saturday, the US military said a strike in northwest Syria had killed a militant linked to a deadly attack on three Americans last month.
The government appeared to be extending its grip on Kurdish-run areas after President Ahmed Al-Sharaa issued a decree declaring Kurdish a “national language” and granting the minority group official recognition.
The Kurds have said Friday’s announcement fell short of their aspirations, while the implementation of a March deal — intended to see Kurdish forces integrated into the state — has stalled.
Government troops drove Kurdish forces from two Aleppo neighborhoods last week and on Saturday took control of an area east of the city.
On Sunday, the government announced the capture of Tabqa, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of Raqqa.
“The Syrian army controls the strategic city of Tabqa in the Raqqa countryside, including the Euphrates Dam, which is the largest dam in Syria,” said Information Minister Hamza Almustafa, according to the official SANA news agency.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), however, said they had “taken the necessary measures to restore security and stability” in Tabqa.
In Deir Hafer, some 50 kilometers east of Aleppo city, an AFP correspondent saw several SDF fighters leaving the town and residents returning under heavy army presence.
Syria’s army said four soldiers had been killed, while Kurdish forces reported several fighters dead. Both sides traded blame for violating a withdrawal deal.
Kurdish authorities ordered a curfew in the Raqqa region after the army designated a swathe of territory southwest of the Euphrates River a “closed military zone,” warning it would target what it said were several military sites.
The SANA news agency reported Sunday that the SDF destroyed two bridges over the Euphrates in Raqqa city, which lies on the eastern bank of the river.
Raqqa’s media directorate separately accused the SDF of cutting off Raqqa city’s water supply by blowing up the main water pipes.
Deir Ezzor governor Ghassan Alsayed Ahmed said on social media that the SDF fired “rocket projectiles” at neighborhoods in government-controlled territories in the city center of Deir Ezzor, Al-Mayadin, and other areas.
The SDF said “factions affiliated with the Damascus government attacked our forces’ positions” and caused clashes in several towns on the east bank of the Euphrates, opposite Al-Mayadin and which lie between Deir Ezzor and the Iraqi border.
- ‘Betrayed’ -
On Friday, Syrian Kurdish leader and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi had committed to redeploying his forces from outside Aleppo to east of the Euphrates.
But the SDF said Saturday that Damascus had “violated the recent agreements and betrayed our forces,” with clashes erupting with troops south of Tabqa.
The army urged the SDF to “immediately fulfil its announced commitments and fully withdraw” east of the river.
The SDF controls swathes of Syria’s oil?rich north and northeast, areas captured during the civil war and the fight against the Daesh group over the past decade.
US envoy Tom Barrack met Abdi in Irbil on Saturday, the presidency of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region said.
While Washington has long supported Kurdish forces, it has also backed Syria’s new authorities.
US Central Command on Saturday urged Syrian government forces “to cease any offensive actions in the areas between Aleppo and al?Tabqa.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, also called for de-escalation and a ceasefire.
- Presidential decree -
Sharaa’s announcement on Friday marked the first formal recognition of Kurdish rights since Syria’s independence in 1946.
The decree stated that Kurds are “an essential and integral part” of Syria, where they have suffered decades of marginalization.
It made Kurdish a “national language” and granted nationality to all Kurds — around 20 percent of whom were stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.
The Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast said the decree was “a first step” but “does not satisfy the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people.
In Qamishli, the main Kurdish city in the country’s northeast, Shebal Ali, 35, told AFP that “we want constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people’s rights.”
Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the decree “offers cultural concessions while consolidating military control.”
“It does not address the northeast’s calls for self-governance,” he said.
Also Saturday, the US military said a strike in northwest Syria had killed a militant linked to a deadly attack on three Americans last month.
Latest updates
© 2026 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.