From Montana to Beirut

Erin Cole, a student at the University of Montana, visited Lebanon for the first time over winter break.

Building boom transforms heart of Beirut

Blocks of historic Ottoman-era buildings, once pocked by bullet holes, have been majestically restored, and new high-rise apartment towers

Four Seasons opens new hotel in Lebanon

Kingdom Hotel Investments (KHI) has opened its five-star Four Seasons Beirut hotel, as the Lebanese city’s hospitality sector continues to grow.

The front of the hotel has been brightly lit and the interiors of the hotels were inspired by Lebanese culture. The hotel features Lebanese artwork, carved screens and gilded calligraphy. A few minutes’ walk away from the hotel is downtown Beirut, with art galleries, boutiques, antique shops, cafés and restaurants.

The 230 room hotel, in which KHI has a controlling 38 per cent stake, opened its doors on Sunday and was expected to cost US$146 million (Dh536.25m). The Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud founded KHI and is its majority shareholder. Hotel Designs

2009 was best year ever for Tourism in Lebanon

The Tourism Ministry says about 1.9 million tourists came to Lebanon in 2009, the highest number of visitors to come to the mountainous Arab nation ever.
The new figure exceeds those from the time before Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, when Beirut was dubbed the “Paris of the Middle East.”
Figures released this week show that 1,851,081 tourists visited Lebanon in 2009, a 39 percent increase from the previous year. The 2009 number is the highest ever and broke the 1974 record of 1.4 million tourists, the ministry reported.
Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud estimated the country’s annual income from tourism at up to $7 billion, or about 20 percent of gross domestic product. Businessweek

Lebanon’s PM returned from Jordan

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri returned to Beirut from Jordan following his one-day meetings with Jordanian King Abdullah II and PM Samir Rifai.
King Abdullah II held a lunch banquet in honor of Hariri prior to their talks which focused on developing relations between the two countries especially in the areas of tourism and transit.
Former MP Bassem al-Sabaa and Advisers Nader Hariri, Hani Hammoud, and Mohammed Shatah accompanied Hariri during this trip

Where to go in 2010

Whisper it quietly – there have been too many false dawns since the Cedar Revolution in 2005 – but Lebanon seems ready to reclaim its rightful place on the holiday map.

Byblos, Lebanon’s ancient port, is reborn

Byblos, Lebanon’s prewar jewel of the Mediterranean, is back. The city lost some of its luster during the 1980s and ’90s, when civil war scared off Lebanon’s rich and famous. But with an uneasy peace holding, with tourism up for the first 10 months of 2009 by nearly half over the same period for 2008, and with locals seeking a refuge from the frenzied pace and skyrocketing prices of Beirut, Byblos is witnessing a rebirth of sorts.
If Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East, as the cliché goes, then Byblos, some 22 miles up the coastline, is its Cannes: an ancient port framed by pre-Roman ruins, white sandy beaches and cedar-topped mountains. The city is famous for its fish restaurants, which serve up fresh red snapper and sea bass to an international clientele. Source: NYT

Beirut is back… and it’s beautiful

By Carole Cadwalladr
How the Lebanese capital went from warzone to 2010’s most glamorous tourist destination