www.yahoonews.com Syria is pumping millions of dollars into its travel industry in a bid to double annual tourism revenue to five billion dollars by 2010 and jump start its stagnating economy.
Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri said the government, whose relations are currently strained with the West, had adopted "a series of major steps... that aim to make Syria a tourist destination of regional and international stature," according to the official SANA news agency .
"The value of tourist investment projects was 371 billion Syrian pounds (7.1 billion US dollars) in 2005, which represents an increase of 170 billion pounds (3.2 billion US dollars) compared with 2004," he said.
The plans aim to revive Syria's long-neglected tourism industry and help boost efforts to reach investment of 37 billion dollars over the next five years in order to meet a seven percent GDP growth target.
Among the projects recently announced are the construction of a luxury Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus, a Sheraton Hotel in the northern city of Aleppo, a tourism complex at the seaside resort of Tartus and a 15-billion dollar resort at the foot of Mount Hermon.
"More than seven million tourists will bring annual revenues of nearly five billion US dollars," the official SANA news agency quoted Tourism Minister Saadallah Agha al-Qalaa as saying during a recent conference on tourism investment in Damascus.
The conference was designed to attract investment for the building or upgrading of 43 tourist sites around the country, a plan which Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari said would also create "150,000 jobs" by 2010.
Prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Syria attracted four million visitors per year, around half of whom came from Arab countries.
But the number of those traveling to the Arab world dwindled in the wake of the attacks, and Syria was no exception. However, it has made something of a come back. Around 2.1 million people visited Syria in 2003, and about three million came in 2004.
The tourism ministry said tourist revenue was 1.4 billion dollars in 2003 and reached 2.2 billion dollars in 2004, or nine percent of GDP.
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