Mourhaf Nazha cut a lonely figure at his family's hotel business during the civil war. Few customers were staying at their Golden Mazzeh hotel in west Damascus as renovation was under way to open another, the landmark Royal Semiramis in the centre of the city.
“We had the odd business customer from Aleppo or Homs, but that was it,” says Mr Nazha, who presides over the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Tourism.
Samiramis, near the Ottoman-era Hejaz railway station, opened several months after the downfall of the regime of Bashar Al Assad in December 2024. Its is teeming with clientele. Among them are business executives seeking to set up ventures, particularly from Gulf companies, and Syrians living abroad who have returned to see relatives or explore opportunities in their homeland.
“This year has been better than the last,” says Mr Nazha, who comes from an old business family in Damascus who started in cargo before going into hotels.
Room occupancy at the Semiramis, which has a distinct blue-green interior, is running at 50 per cent. At Golden Mazzeh, which been a venue for some of the increasing number of business conferences in the country, occupancy is 70 per cent.
The government under President Ahmad Al Shara, who moderated his positions and aligned with the US after taking power, has presented itself as business-friendly. Aside from some restrictions on alcohol, there appears to be little change in how Semiramis and other hotels operate.
Low tourist traffic
But tourist numbers remain low, especially from the Gulf and countries in the West, who were the mainstay of the sector before the civil war broke out in 2011.
Syria boasts millennia-old cities, as well as religious sites and Crusader castles – one of which, Krak des Chevaliers, is among the best preserved in the region. The country also has beaches, forests, deserts and the Euphrates, the river that nurtured much of the ancient world. Syria's art scene is widely recognised as among the best in the Middle East. The country also once attracted many who wanted to study Arabic.
A partial opening of the economy in the decade before the war helped bring in millions of tourists, but only several thousand are estimated to have visited Syria since the conflict ended.
That is partly because of persistent violence in parts of Syria, while much of the country's infrastructure is either dilapidated or destroyed. There have been several bombings, deadly attacks on security personnel by ISIS, and outbreaks of fighting involving minority groups. Crime has affected a push by the government to portray Syria as being ready for investment. Many hotels have closed, or lie in ruins.
Mr Nazha says tourists are bound to return if the country continues to stabilise, and if megaprojects to restore electricity and revamp the transport and communication networks are realised. The construction of a new terminal at Damascus airport, awarded to a Qatari company, is expected to be completed this year.
Hotel projects and investment
In the tourism sector, the authorities announced last year that a Saudi company, Le Park Concord Hotels & Resorts, had started work on revamping and expanding a government-owned beachfront hotel in Latakia. Dubai developer Emaar Properties has also considered coastal projects in Syria, founder Mohamed Alabbar has said.
Syria has only about 5,000 hotel rooms and Mr Nazha says another 20,000 are needed in the medium-term to deal with the arrival of tourists he expects will be driven by curiosity to see postwar Syria.
Many of the hotels are rundown, he says, although the government has relaxed restrictions to enable some to reopen even if the entire property is not yet renovated. That applies, in particular, to two and three-star hotels, which are among the most rundown in the country.
There is also a shortage of trained staff, partly because so many qualified Syrians fled the country during the war. But the Tourism Ministry has been working with hotels to develop on-the-job training programmes, he says.
If the security situation continues to improve then Syria “will be needing hotel projects to be realised quickly”, Mr Nazha adds. “We don't want people to come and not find rooms”.
Bookings from abroad
He expects Syria's reintegration into the international financial system to make bookings easier, especially from abroad. Credit card companies and international banks can begin operations after the US lifted all sanctions on the country last month, which will allow hotels to take reservations and deposit payments online.
Restrictions on Google Maps, as well as booking and messaging apps, are also to be lifted, officials say.
Along with members of his family, Mr Nazha leased the Semiramis hotel from the state-owned Syrian Hejaz Railway company, a derivative of the Ottoman-era project that connected Greater Syria to the Arabian Peninsula. The railway, which is largely defunct, also carried some of the first 20th-century western tourists to Syria.
In the post-civil war era, the hospitality sector has been reliant on foreign citizens looking for business and citizen “who are thinking about whether to return to Syria for good”, Mr Nazha says. “People are starting to feel that the liberation of Syria has brought real change.”
He points out that corruption is no longer the obstacle to investment that it was under the Assad regime, when permits were difficult to obtain.
While spending years and millions of dollars rehabilitating the Semiramis, Mr Nazha also warded off shady figures within the former regime who demanded a share of the business to issue the necessary permits. “The grip of the security apparatus had scared almost everyone from Syria,” he says. “There are [still] a few problems. But safety, security and stability are improving.”
One factor outside anyone's control is the Iran war, which has affected travel and tourism across the Middle East. “We have to be realistic and realise that the situation has to improve, not just in Syria but also in the region,” Mr Nazha says.
