Beirut steps out of war zone into tourist trap
Last updated 10/1/2009 12:59:28 PM
The view from Noir, a recent addition to Beirut’s clubbing scene, over the Lebanese capital’s Gemmayzeh district and port area is stunning. Yet few of Noir’s patrons take any notice of the elegant buildings and the spotlights sweeping the sky from some of the neighbouring nightclubs.
Dressed to the nines, Noir’s denizens are strictly there to watch each other and to be seen in what is, according to some, the hottest new place in town. Noir is one of several such establishments that opened at the start of the summer to take advantage of an unprecedented surge in tourism in Lebanon.
“Of course we timed it to open at the start of the summer,” says Rima Ariss, Noir’s marketing manager. The investors behind the $2.6m club “did feasibility studies and looked at the situation and saw that there is a gap in the market. There are only a handful of real nightclubs in Beirut while demand is very big,” adds Ms Ariss.
Taking advantage of the quiet after four years of political upheaval, assassinations and war, visitors are flocking again to Lebanon. More than 1m, including 79,000 Europeans, visited in July alone, according to the ministry of tourism. The remainder were almost equally divided between Lebanese expatriates, Syrians and other Arab nationals.
The tourism sector is one of the pillars of Lebanon’s economy, along with banking and real estate, and the Lebanese are eager to replace the old image of their country as a war zone with something more appealing.
“The story that everybody is putting out there, as well as the fascination that the media seem to have with us, is that we are converting a war zone into a tourist zone,” says Nagi Molkos, one of the owners of Hodema, a hospitality development company in Beirut.
The effort to overhaul the image is being helped by flashy nightclubs filled to the rafters – if they have any because many are on rooftops – and by big-name events featuring international DJs and such star turns as Snoop Dogg, the US rapper.
Beirut’s revived party town image comes at a time when the region’s only other aspiring entertainment centre, Dubai, has hit the financial buffers and as the DJ scene in Europe is said to have peaked. All agree that the music, party and events sector in Lebanon is growing.