For over two millennia the ancient city of Petra has towered majestically over the Jordanian desert. Today its famed rose-red temples hewn into the rockface lie empty and silent.
As the novel coronavirus spread around the world, Jordanian authorities imposed a lockdown, and the last tourists left on Monday, March 16, a day before the Hashemite kingdom closed its borders.
"It's the first time I've seen this place so empty. Usually there are thousands of tourists," said Nayef Hilalat, 42, who has worked as a guardian at the ancient archaeological site for a decade.
"Every year at this time the place would be buzzing with people," he lamented, wearing a khaki cap bearing the Jordanian flag. "Today all we can hear is the birds singing."
A wonder of the world
One of the seven wonders of the world, and classified as a Unesco world heritage site in 1985, Petra was once the capital of the nomadic Nabataean Arab peoples and dates back to at least 200 years BC.
With the passage of time, it has become a beacon for tourism in the country and the region.
Tables at the site's cafes forlornly gather dust, while items like T-shirts in the souvenir shops fade in the desert sun
Its spectacular Al-Khazneh, or Treasury, with its stunning sandstone facade, is one of Petra's most famous attractions, and was a location for Steven Spielberg's 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
But now, the steep winding Siq path – a gorge over a kilometre long that leads into Al-Khazneh – is deserted. Gone are the tourists normally thronging the pathway on foot, or riding on donkeys or in horse-drawn carriages.
Life is in limbo. Tables at the site's cafes forlornly gather dust or are littered with forgotten plastic cups, while items like T-shirts in the souvenir shops fade in the desert sun.
'A catastrophe'
The vast site, lying in a deep valley between the Red Sea, in the south, and the Dead Sea, to the north, is a ghost town.
About 200 tour guides, along with 1,500 horse and donkey owners, are out of work.
It's "a catastrophe", said Naim Nawafleh, 55, who has been a guide here for about 30 years.
Jordan welcomes some five million visitors a year, and tourism accounts for 14 per cent of the country's GDP, employing about 100,000 people.
A father of six, Nawafleh used to earn some $70 (Dh257) a day.
"In the past, the number of visitors varied according to the upheavals in the region. But today, there are no tourists at all. It's never happened before," he said.
Jordan was already in a precarious situation before the pandemic, with unemployment at 19.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2020.
Bordering conflict-torn Syria and Iraq, and lacking the oil wealth of some of its neighbours, the kingdom has worked to revive its tourism industry.
Petra, an immense 264,000-square metre site south of Amman, saw a record "1.13 million visitors last year, including a million from abroad", said Suleiman al-Farajat, responsible for tourism and development in Petra.
About 80 per cent of the region's roughly 38,000 people who are mainly nomadic Bedouins, depend on tourism directly or indirectly, he said.
This includes Nael Nawas, 41, a father of eight, who earned between $40 to $55 a day, transporting tourists to and from the site on the back of his donkey.
"We'll be in a real pickle" if the tourist industry doesn't pick up, he said, adding that since mid-March he has been working for a livestock seller.
Empty hotels
Farajat said he hoped visitors would return quickly to "countries less affected by the pandemic" like the kingdom.
But tour guide Nawafleh was worried some tourists, particularly the elderly and pensioners, may be reluctant to return.
With a population of around 10 million, Jordan has officially recorded just over 950 cases of Covid-19 cases and nine deaths.
The pandemic came at the peak of our tourist season
Tourism earned Jordan $5.3 billion last year, according to Abed al-Razzaq Arabiyat, head of the Jordan Tourism Board.
But revenues have almost completely dried up, he said, promising measures to help salvage the season, including a focus on domestic tourism.
Meanwhile, for Petra's 45 hotels, the situation is grim.
At the three-star La Maison, a lonely receptionist eyed the entrance, with no guests in sight.
"The pandemic came at the peak of our tourist season," said owner Tarek Twissi, who is also the head of the Petra hotels association.
"Reservations were at over 90 per cent and in less than a week they were all cancelled", he said.
"The occupancy rate at my hotel is now at zero."
THE BIO
Favourite author - Paulo Coelho
Favourite holiday destination - Cuba
New York Times or Jordan Times? NYT is a school and JT was my practice field
Role model - My Grandfather
Dream interviewee - Che Guevara
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
