Travel industry suffers another blow in Lebanon
ZAHLE, Beirut -- The day the bombs stopped falling on the verdant slopes of the Bekaa Valley, the Ksara winery dispatched its field workers to start picking grapes for the fall harvest.
This year's wine crop survived, but the banner tourist season that was underway in Lebanon when war broke out July 12 has been completely scuttled. Gone are the 40,000 tourists who visit Ksara every year, touring the grounds of the 149-year Jesuit monastery where Lebanon's most popular wine is produced.
``It is easy to build a bridge, but it is difficult to rebuild confidence in a country," said tourism minister Joseph Sarkis, gloomily assessing his country's prospects for rebuilding a tourism industry that seems never to fully recover from Lebanon's cycle of wars.
Beyond the human toll of the recent monthlong conflict, which killed an estimated 854 Lebanese and 159 Israelis, the country's long-term economic future is once again in doubt -- especially in the key growth area of tourism. Sarkis estimates the economic impact of the war on the tourist sector at $1 billion in damaged infrastructure and lost investments.
The setback is all the more painful for Lebanon because tourist levels were beginning to climb consistently over the past years. The government had expected 1.6 million visitors in 2006, in what would have been the best year since before the 1975-90 civil war, when Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East and the country drew 2 million visitors annually.
Evidence of the devastation inflicted on the tourism industry litters the country.
Oil slicks have turned many of the tony beach resorts of central Lebanon into stinking no-go zones -- the result of Israel's bombing of huge petroleum tanks on the coast, which sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel into the Mediterranean.
Thousands of new rental cars sit on the docks in the Beirut harbor, unclaimed by the companies that hoped to rent them to tourists. Boutiques and department stores that usually do a brisk summer business with visitors from other Arab countries have slashed prices by as much as 70 percent, but barely get a trickle of shoppers.
When the war started, most tourists from Europe, the United States, and the Arab world fled as soon as they could, and many of those with plans to visit cance led their trips.
Charles Ghostine, the head of Ksara winery, said he believes the tourism industry will rebound, just as it has after each crisis that has gripped his country. This year, tourism was climbing again after taking a hit in early 2005, when Lebanon's former prime minister was murdered and a spate of car bombings struck Beirut.
The cycle of war and rebuilding is familiar to Ghostine, 57, who reinvented himself once before. After a decade as a leader of a Christian militia responsible for a district in downtown Beirut, Ghostine opted for a calmer life, going to work in 1985 as a corporate lawyer.
In 1991, he was asked to take over as managing director of Ksara winery. At the time, its production was flagging and Lebanon was still reeling from the civil war. During much of that war, bosses in Beirut couldn't even visit the vineyards in the Bekaa Valley, cut off by fighting that raged in the mountains.
Gradually, Ghostine nursed Ksara back to its position as the country's number-one winery. He introduced such noble grape varietals as Cabernet and Syrah, which are more popular in foreign markets than the local Lebanese varietals. Now, Ksara produces 2.1 million bottles of wine a year, about half of which is exported, mainly to Europe.
The country's vineyards stretch down the fertile, breezy Bekaa Valley, home to one of Lebanon's premier tourist attractions: the Roman ruins at Baalbek. It is also the area where Hezbollah was founded and still commands major support. During the recent conflict, Israeli aircraft regularly attacked what they described as Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa.
Shi'ite followers of the Islamist movement also pick grapes for the wineries, even though Hezbollah opposes the consumption of alcohol.
Tour buses bringing visitors to Beirut from Syria or returning from a day at Baalbek often call at Ksara or at Lebanon's other well-known winery, Chateau Kefraya, which hasn't even opened its doors since the Aug. 14 cease-fire.
Lebanese businesses had invested huge sums in new or expanded ventures, like a pair of four-star hotels originally scheduled to open this month in Beirut. Now, gleaming hotel towers are bereft of guests; nightclubs are shuttered; and new seaside restaurants and beaches are without a single customer.
Even with the war over, Sarkis said, Lebanon could not ``resume as normally" because of Hezbollah's status as a force beyond the government's control. ``People are still anxious," he said.
The Tourism Ministry is still conducting a precise assessment of the damages. Sarkis said the government will give limited compensation to tourist business operators who lost significant amounts of money, particularly from the flurry of capital investments in the lead-up to the 2006 tourist season.
At Ksara, the latest burst of optimism had taken the form of an ornate new tasting room, built in the style of an old European library, that can accommodate hundreds of tourists at a time. Now it is gathering dust.
Gaelle Jabbour, 28, usually gives tours to anywhere from 50 to 400 tourists. Now she sits in the antechamber of the Ksara convent, smiling into the empty room.
The Jesuits dug an intricate network of underground tunnels more than a mile long, where the wine still ages in oak barrels. It's the featured point in the guided tour, which Jabbour hasn't given since July 11, the day before the war started. She wrestled with a rusty lock to open the gate to the tunnels for a visiting journalist.
``We locked this up and went home," Jabbour explained. ``I didn't work for 33 days."
Ghostine heard a news report the first week of the war that said his winery had been bombed. He said he learned hours later that the bombs had struck the industrial poultry farm next door, sparing the winery. ``I don't think the chickens were members of Hezbollah," he said with a laugh.
With an attitude he describes as typically Lebanese, he sees a silver lining in the end of the conflict: The deployment of 30,000 United Nations peacekeepers, many of them wine-drinking Europeans, should bring more business to the wineries.
``We have to be optimistic," he said. ``Lebanon is like the phoenix. As long as we are not dead, everything is possible."
