When you wake up in the morning and read this kind of sentence in a local paper, it is unimaginably difficult for the coffee you’re drinking to not coming pouring out…
AMMAN – As the national tourism awareness campaign is one phase closer to completion, some one million Jordanians are now better-informed of the role tourism plays in the Kingdom’s development. [source
I think – and maybe this is just me – that the local “newspapers” should be redefined as “press releases”. Because that’s exactly how they read most of the time.
Hey foo [insert sleeve wiping coffee off screen] l….
Consider yourself informed you tourignorant!
Allah ysam7ak.. they’ve already done the press release by distributing pamphlets, brochures, and such… right after this growing awareness of the importance of tourism among the one million who got those pamphlets, ain’t it time to move a step further? lolll
the next step might be publishing articles about the historical importance of certain tourist sites in Jordan, like you know, Petra, Jerash, and ma3een!
Slightly off topic – people who do not drink coffee should not be allowed to use it for expressive writing purposes =P
That said, may be the purpose of this awareness campaign is to help Jordanians understand and appreciate why tourism is so expensive for locals and budget travelers.
AM: loool…you monkey 😀
secratea: you have a point, and its partly also the one i was sarcastically trying to make. there has to be more to it than just distributing pamphlets and telling jordanians about all the sites they can’t afford to visit anyway.
Lina: there is an unmanly element to saying “milk” rather than “coffee” 😀
i think tourism and tourism awareness campaigns are foreign-centric, as well they should be. however there is still a need to make certain sites more affordable across the board. there many places in Jordan, despite its small size – that many jordanians are unaware of. eco-tourist sites and protected areas are a good example
I just hope we move from ‘awareness’ to action at some point, as that important step seems rare on several fronts.
At least the printing press got some real business billings out of this.
Since this program is funded by aid there is an audit and reporting obligation to an external entity. The only measurable thing would be the physical goods – the printed materials. Otherwise they can’t claim in their report that X amount of money was spent in Y time and impacted Z people. Here Z people = number of printings.
Notice in the eloquently camouflaged story the one line on alleged results is not quantified: “We have had overwhelmingly positive feedback so far, and the campaign has reached the target†– since the feedback did not come back in form of physical materials. Where in fact “overwhelmingly positive feedback” and “target” are what should be of concern and should probably be measured over various intervals and not the week the printings get distributed. But aid also comes with a deadline, and unfortunately many a time drives actions for the wrong reasons. This is not a Jordan-only problem of course.
Whether or not a population is better informed usually reveals itself over time and is manifested thru behavior. Awareness is intangible until it becomes action in lifestyle and workstyle, and then it can be measured. The measure of awareness is tough to achieve thru a 100,000 flier/day dose and a press release. But that does look good in the closure presentation, and is easy to do. Heck, you never have to leave the office for this one.
Aid is a bitch.
A couple hrs ago we booked a bunch of rooms for work guests at one of the Dead Sea resorts. The rate for Jordanian is higher than the foreigner.
I am indeed informed.
AM, those are some interesting points.
“The rate for Jordanian is higher than the foreigner.”
This reminds me of when I was traveling to Jordan with a friend (Jordanian). He had to pay more money upon entering then I.
Is a pamphlet all what it takes to raise tourism awareness? I seriously doubt it. Awareness gets built through constructive dialogue, smart debates, and serious initiatives. The government launched the National Tourism Strategy 4 years ago and to date it is yet to live up to its commitments. What we have in tourism today is a shelved strategy with no one entity to claim ownership. It was meant to build bridges of understanding and cooperation between the private and the public sectors, but instead it exposed how untrustworthy and unreliable our policy makers are.
Today we witness a constant attack by the public sector on the private sector for no clear reasons. The attack coincides with trying to constantly force an unwanted partnership by consistently attempting to stipulate levies that are tantamount to de facto taxes.
The public sector has completely failed in acknowledging the crucial role that the private sector has played and still plays in supporting and promoting tourism and awareness in Jordan. A case in point is the agenda of the conference of Arab ministers of tourism due to take place on Tuesday, June 17. The private sector has been totally excluded from any meaningful participation. The debates are all among governmental and semi governmental representatives. If this shows anything, it shows how much our officials love to hear themselves talk and more importantly how exclusive they are of their supposed partner in the so called public-private partnership.
it seems like they been conducting a poll “Simultaneously” to the alleged campaign!! lol
I had been wondering about the room rates. They seemed awfully high at the Dead Sea. Expedia here I come!
Ha! I sent this same excerpt yesterday to my friend in Cairo, who reported back with much more exciting news:
“In Sharkeya, a villager smashed his neighbor’s head with a brick after the
latter’s donkey wandered into the former’s field and ate some maize.”
“Cairo airport tarmac was the scene of an exciting chase between security
men and a passenger arriving from Paris on a French flight who snatched the
passport of an Egyptian American passenger while they were disembarking and
tried to shoot his way through customs, but airport security men caught him
before he could run away.”
AMP, now this is real fun tourisim coverage. Viva Egypt