A British adventure travel operator is planning to launch holidays in Syria “as soon as stability returns” to the war-torn nation.
The UK government has opened discussions with the Syrian rebels who toppled the dictator, Bashar al-Assad, but still urges British citizens to leave. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) remains a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK because of its past association with al Qaida, the terrorist organisation once led by Osama bin Laden.
Dylan Harris, founder of Wigan-based Lupine Travel, has run a sold-out series of trips to Afghanistan this year, and is looking to resume tours to Syria as early as April 2025.
“As soon as it becomes apparent that things are stable, I could run trips immediately,” he told the You Should Have Been There travel podcast.
The main obstacle, Mr Harris said, is red tape: “It’s difficult to know what’s going to happen with the visas at the moment – who’s going to be in charge of them, along with the processes before they can start up.
“At the moment the border with Lebanon is completely open on the Syrian side. Once you’ve completed border formalities on the Lebanese side, it’s possible to just walk right in to Syria without any checks or stamps. This is how most journalists are getting in at the moment.
“However, we won’t be running tours there until they have fixed this and there’s a fully functioning border checkpoint up and running again so that we can ensure we are all in there legally.
“I would imagine this will be in place by the new year, so then it’s just a case of waiting for tourism visas to resume. If things run smoothly with the government transition then this could be as soon as March. We’d then look to resume tours in April just after the end of Ramadan.
“Everything is in place already over there because it isn’t really that long since Syria was a big tourist destination in the Middle East.”
As recently as 2011, organisations such as Explore, Voyages Jules Verne and the Royal Academy ran tours to Syria.
At present the Foreign Office warns against all travel to Syria, “due to the ongoing conflict and unpredictable security conditions”.
UK citizens are told: “If you are a British national in Syria, leave the country by any practical means.”
