BEIRUT — More than 1.5 million tourists visited Lebanon in the first 10 months of 2009, or 43 percent more than the same year-earlier period, the tourism ministry said on Saturday.
“This number marks a 42.7 percent increase for the same period from 2008 and an 84 percent increase from 2007,” a ministry statement said.
A record one million tourists landed in the tiny Mediterranean country in July alone, the ministry said.
Departementet har sagt at Libanon håper å være vert for to millioner turister innen utgangen av 2009, et tall som omtrent tilsvarer halvparten av landets befolkning.
Most visitors are Lebanese expatriates and tourists from the oil-rich Gulf, but the tiny Mediterranean country has also gained popularity as a holiday destination among Europeans.
Tourism in Lebanon had taken a beating in recent years after a string of assassinations that began with a Beirut bombing that killed former premier Rafiq Hariri in February 2005.
In 2006, Israel and Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah fought a devastating summer war and the following year the army battled with Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamists in a Palestinian refugee camp.
However, tourism made a dramatic recovery in 2008 with the arrival of 1.3 million visitors to the country once dubbed the “Switzerland of the Middle East.”
