4 stars Hotels in Lebanon Industry News - A summarized report

In view of the latest published information by Hotels in Lebanon and of the most recent studies of the Ministry of Tourism, the expansion of the Tourism Sector is continuous, in spite of a lot of contradictory information being published and communicated here and there.
Lebanon Hotels Occupancy Rate is in continous growth, as the balance sheets and revenues of the hotels show. The percentage of occupancy of the Hotels is currently around 80% for the whole year,with 100% occupancy rates during some periods of the year, mainly festive periods and summer, and varied percentages ranging from 70% and up for other periods.
These digits are based on last year hotels in Lebanon results, and adapt particularly to the 5 and 4 stars hotels in Beirut and the main Lebanon regions. Because it was almost impossible to gather information from 3 stars hotels, those were not included in the study.
The minister of tourism declared today that the possibilities are infinite for investment and cooperation in the touristic sector in Lebanon. pointed out that the hotels sector is considered among those that realized the highest growth in Lebanon, that growth is above 20% for the previous period.
The minister of tourism announced that the previous year numbers were between 1.95 and 2 million tourists and 5.5 billion euros revenues, and 1.850 million tourists for the last 11 months, which is in fact a growth of 35% if we take the numbers of 2008 into consideration.
As per the tourism minister, the world tourism barometer divulged by the Organization of the World Tourism pointed out that the tourists number increased by approximately 46.3% during the first quarter of 2009, in comparison with the same months of the year before. This number is maybe the highest among the 165 countries that the report included. The minister of tourism also pointed out that the high number of institutions related to tourism is not enough and that Lebanon misses a lot of opportunities in the different tourism sectors, in particular the creation of 3 stars hotels, the cultural tourism that helps the development of internal tourism in the provinces, without forgetting the leisure touristic centers and the cultural centers that would contribute to the business tourism.
Related to the latter, Mr. Abboud stated that Lebanon has achieved a "high evolution" in spite of missing infrastructure for expositions and big congresses. Beirut Hotels have hosted a lot of conferences in the environment, medical, information technology, religious, economical and jewelry sectors, which aided notably to the flow of tourists and its growth in Lebanon in the previous year.
The tourism minister concluded: "Other sectors have also seen some growth, like real estate and banking and financial services."