Michael Karam: As a mouthwatering tourist destination, Lebanon is a hard sell

Above, a customer buys traditional food at a stall at Beirut Souks in Lebanon. Wael Hamzeh / EPA

I can’t remember the actual percentage, but I remember reading somewhere that a lot of people today get their news solely from Facebook. And so if we birds of a feather do whatever it is birds of a feather do, the chances are that our spin on life is reinforced by the shared values of our “friends”.

A neo Nazi from Nottingham, for example, is unlikely to have bros in the Green Party; his “news” will probably be a diet of stories with a far right bent posted or shared by his knuckle-dragging pals. Similarly, the lefty liberals who inhabit my hometown of Brighton will be obsessed with cultural inclusion; up in arms over Brexit or moaning about what they see as cruel capitalist practices, such as putting metal studs in shop doorways to deter dossers.

I have an eclectic mix of “friends” from all political colours and backgrounds and this makes for some fruity exchanges, especially when political galaxies collide. Nationalities tend to stick to themselves but even my Lebanese Facebook friends fall into three categories: those who spend their time slagging off their country for being the basket case it is; those who labour under the illusion that Lebanon is still Eden on earth and who will have no truck with anyone who dares to say otherwise; and, lastly, those who can’t make up their minds about the place. I’m probably in the latter category, unable to reconcile off my natural tendency to skewer the ridiculous with an unshakeable belief in the country’s potential.

Thus my newsfeed is littered with lists of why Lebanon is so fabulous (we invented the alphabet and you can swim and ski in the same day so we must be pretty groovy) as well as recycled, way past their sell-by-date news stories about why Beirut is the best party city in the world (CNN), the city you should visit NOW (The New York Times in 2009) and the city with the most tantalising property investment opportunities (The Daily Telegraph). These, by and large, are posted by Lebanese living abroad keen to show their foreign friends or colleagues that we are not a nation of suicide bombers.

Others, those who live in Lebanon for the most part, tend to be less generous and have no qualms about listing reasons why everyone should give Lebanon a wide berth: rubbish, corruption, lack of amenities and even repression (this after a young lad was arrested and jailed for insulting the country on Facebook). So what is the truth? Probably a little bit of everything if we are being honest.

Last week, I was scrolling down my newsfeed on which someone had shared a post, purportedly from Finland, showing a massive banner that read “Nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November except you, you bad ass! Welcome.” I have no idea who was responsible for it, but as an exercise in self-deprecation I thought it worked rather well especially as we live an age of cheap air travel in which people can book a spur-of-the-moment holiday on their phone and travel to lesser known destinations. Whoever came up with the sentence has surely tapped into the adventurous open-mindedness of many modern travellers. Dude.

It occurred to me that the Lebanese ministry of tourism could do worse than employ a similar approach. Let’s face it, Lebanon outside a small cognoscenti, still has a difficult reputation, one for which the bar of expectation is set alarmingly low. And this by and large is a good thing because when the non-Arab “budget” tourist does hop on Pegasus Air from London Stansted via Istanbul, such is the welcoming nature and inherent generosity of spirit of the Lebanese, they have something close to a life-affirming experience. So why not make them feel even better about their “off-piste” choice of destination. Don’t we all want to be a “bad ass”?

But, and there’s always a but, many Lebanese would be disturbed by such an ad. We can’t laugh at ourselves. We don’t want to offend. It’s what comes from living in a consensual society. Why would we ever admit that we were hardly the most mouthwatering tourist destination?

And therein lies the rub. We think we’re wonderful (which of course we are) but the reality is we’re a hard sell. Maybe it’s time someone took a chance. Let’s face it, no one got anywhere by playing it safe.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.

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