A charter tourist plane carrying 189 French tourists on Wednesday landed at King Hussein International Airport (KHIA) in Aqaba, inaugurating a tourist air bridge for 2023 season to attract tourists to Jordan from France with support of Jordan Tourism Board (JTB). Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Makram Qaisi, stressed the importance of French tourist market to Jordan, adding that visitors’ tours to the Kingdom’s tourist and archaeological sites support local tourism and increase volume of the Kingdom’s economic revenues. For his part, JTB Director General, Abdul Razzaq Arabiyat, said launch of this tourist route, with an average of 14 trips until end of the current season, supports tourism to the Kingdom and affirms its recovery, pointing to increasing tourist activity for Jordan from charter flights. This step, he noted, came in light of JTB’s efforts to attract charter, low-cost, and regular planes from several countries directly to Aqaba’s King Hussein Airport, referring to the “fruitful” cooperation with Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) and KHIA. Arabiyat said the Kingdom is scheduled to receive more charter flights in the coming days, indicating that the JTB is working to attract more flights to Amman and Aqaba directly, to visit the Kingdom’s tourist and archaeological sites. These trips would increase number of tourists from Romania to Jordan, in addition to other European countries, he added. He stressed JTB’s keenness to provide “healthy” competitiveness in the aviation sector and harness this effort to stimulate economy by attracting “important” investments and stimulating tourism to Jordan’s market, which are two “vital” factors to achieve prosperity of Jordanian economy. Operation of these lines is expected to contribute to stimulating tourist movement to Amman, Aqaba and other Jordanian tourist areas, he pointed out.
Source: Jordan News Agency