War-Inflicted Slowdown Ends Robust Year for Tourism in Middle East

The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which erupted in early October, has halted international tourism to Israel and severely blunted travel to neighboring countries in a ripple effect spreading across the entire Middle East. While the slowdown in international visitors is only one of the war’s economic repercussions in the region, it poses a significant threat to the economies of Egypt, Jordan and other nations heavily dependent on tourism and has swiftly reversed a banner year of travel in the Middle East.

The war has affected all segments of the travel industry, with international travel operators scaling back or postponing excursions, cruise lines redeploying ships and airlines dramatically reducing service. And many travelers, heeding government warnings and their own worries, are increasingly wary about visiting the region, prompting waves of cancellations.

Local tour operators fear what a protracted war would do to a promising and growing industry.

“We foresaw the Middle East evolving into the ‘New Europe’ with the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement and Saudi Arabia’s integration into the tourism system,” said Khaled Ibrahim, a Cairo-based consultant for Amisol Travel Egypt and a member of the Middle East Travel Alliance. “We all hope that this war does not escalate and shatter the hopes that people — Arabs, Israelis and Iranians alike — have been holding onto.” Amisol Travel in Egypt has received only 40 to 50 percent of its typical bookings, he said, for the months between February and September 2024.

Hussein Abdallah, general manager of Lebanon Tours and Travels in Beirut, believes that “all of Lebanon is 100 percent safe,” but said he hasn’t had a single booking since the war started, prematurely ending a “very good year” for the tour business. Now, he said, tourist sites like the Jeita Grotto and the Baalbek Temples, a UNESCO World Heritage site, that normally receive thousands of visitors daily, are empty.

“Demand for most Middle Eastern countries is worsening,” said Olivier Ponti, a vice president at ForwardKeys, a data-analysis firm that tracks global air travel reservations. In the three weeks after Oct. 7, flight bookings to the Middle East dropped by 26 percent compared to the bookings made for the same time period in 2019. And inbound tickets to Israel fell below negative 100 percent, compared to the equivalent period in 2019, as cancellations exceeded the number of new tickets issued.

The Israel-Hamas…