Petra (Jordan) (AFP)
"It is the first time that I see this place so empty, usually it is filled with thousands of tourists": caretaker, Nayef Hilalat is alone facing the majestic Khazneh, the most famous of the temples of the ancient city of Petra.
Flagship tourist site of Jordan and the Middle East, the city carved out of pink granite some 2,000 years ago by the Nabataeans is deserted by visitors, a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Every year at the same time, the place swarms," said AFP Nayef Hilalat, who has worked for ten years on this place listed among the Seven New Wonders of the World.
"Today, we only hear the birdsong," said the 42-year-old man, wearing a khaki cap struck with the Jordanian flag.
At the end of the Siq, a tortuous gorge more than a kilometer usually used by tourists on foot, on donkey or in horse-drawn carriages, it makes slow trips back and forth in front of the entrance to the Khazneh ").
The same unreal atmosphere in the cafes and souvenir shops nearby: tables covered with dust, plastic cups strewn on the floor, shirts for sale discolored by the sun ... Life seems to have stopped its course.
- "Never seen" -
The last tourists left the place on March 16, on the eve of the closure of airports in Jordan, where the sector represents 14% of the GDP and employs around 100,000 people, with five million visitors per year.
Since then, located between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, in the "Valley of Moses" (Wadi Moussa), the immense city, which stretches over 264,000 square meters, is a ghost town.
Nearly 200 guides and 1,500 owners of donkeys and horses used to transport tourists are now unemployed.
"What is happening to us is a disaster," says Naïm Nawaflé, 55, a tour guide in Petra for the past thirty years.
"In the past, attendance varied with the ups and downs in the region, but today, there are no more tourists, it's unheard of."
Father of six children, he received the equivalent of $ 70 a day. If the season does not resume soon, he will have exhausted his meager savings.
He also fears that visitors, "especially the elderly and the retired, will be discouraged by the measures" taken against the virus.
In total, about 80% of the inhabitants of the region, or 38,000 people, mainly Bedouins, who depend directly or indirectly on the sector, said Sleimane al-Farajate, responsible for tourism and development in Petra.
Like Naël Nawas, 41 years old and father of eight children, who made between 40 and 55 dollars a day by transporting tourists on his donkey.
Since mid-March, he has been working for a cattle dealer. If tourism does not resume, "we will find ourselves in a huge mess," he said.
- From 90% to "nothing" -
Deprived of hydrocarbons, the scene of social movements in recent years, Jordan was already in a precarious economic situation before the irruption of Covid-19. In the first quarter, the kingdom recorded an unemployment rate of 19.3%.
In Petra, the atmosphere is just as gloomy in hotels - the city has 45, or 3,000 rooms.
"The pandemic has reached the peak of the season, which begins in February," said Tarek Twissi, owner of "La Maison", a three-star establishment.
"Bookings exceeded 90% and in one week, nothing," regrets the president of the Petra Hotel Association.
The shock was all the more brutal since Petra, listed in 1985 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, had broken a record last year, "with 1.13 million tourists, including one million from abroad", Sleiman al-Farajate notes.
He hopes that people will quickly return to "countries little affected by the pandemic (...) like Jordan", where about 800 cases have been officially recorded, including nine deaths.
After having been weakened by instability in its Iraqi and Syrian neighbors, the sector had garnered $ 5.3 billion in 2019, added the director of the Jordanian tourism office, Abed Al Razzaq Arabiyat.
To date, these recipes are almost "zero".
If the government has not yet made concrete announcements, Arabiyate promises measures to "save" the season, focusing in particular on "domestic tourism", in a country where the population does not exceed 10 million 'souls.
© 2020 AFP