Royal Jordanian still battling tourism hit from Gaza conflict

Royal Jordanian Airlines is continuing to feel the impact of lost tourism resulting from the ongoing Israeli-Gaza conflict which stymied its hopes of returning to the black last year. The Oneworld carrier had been on track to record its first net profit since 2019 after the first nine months of the year before fresh conflict broke out between Israel and Hamas. “We were projecting [a profit of] JD15m ($21m) by the end of the year. Then this Gaza thing happened and unfortunately we ended up with a loss of $8m,” said Royal Jordanian CE Samer Majali, speaking to FlightGlobal on the sidelines of the IATA AGM in Dubai in June. “On a turnover of a billion its not a great loss, but psychologically it was.” ”This year we are not sure either,” he says, citing the continuing impact of the conflict and noting the situation is exacerbated by a number of western government travel advisories on states in the region. ”It really is detrimental because we rely so much on tourism, people go elsewhere.” Majali adds: “The impact is big, especially on tourism coming into Jordan. We lost huge amounts of traffic. So we are trying to compensate a little bit, but it is not easy. Entertainment, discretionary tourism is very fickle, so it’s a problem.”<br/>