JEHAD BIN HASSAN BUKAMAL Minister of Information INTERVIEW

ahrain has always drawn covetous eyes to its shores. Inhabited for over 5,000 years, the small archipelagic nation set in the Arabian Gulf has found itself harboring the unwanted attentions of invaders from foreign climes for most of its history. The sandals of the ancient Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Persian armies have all left their mark on Bahraini beaches, creating an indelible cultural footprint.

In the 21st century, however, Bahrain is activley courting a foreign invasion of a different sort. The government of Bahrain recently gave the green light to the creation of a new body to promote the island’s tourism offer. The General Tourism Authority’s mandate is to generate a 25% increase in the tourism industry over the next five years. At present, tourism accounts for less than 7% of GDP. By 2014, the new authority hopes to have played its part in raising this figure to 10%.

Jehad bin Hassan Bukamal, whose ministry of information is currently responsible for all matters relating to tourism, explains how the private-public synergy has been created to add an extra dimension to Bahrain’s tourism offer: “An example of the success of the joint efforts between the private and public sectors is the Spring of Culture, a high quality cultural tourism program linking the world to Bahrain’s cultural heritage and archeological sites. This event brings together cultural performances from all over the world, book launches, conferences, forums and seminars. It is an annual event that works to further expose Bahrain as a globally attractive artistic and cultural hub”

Paramount to the authority’s goal will be the recent selection of a target market – families, leisure tourists and honeymooners. Currently, visitors to the kingdom come predominantly from other GCC countries. Saudi Arabians alone account for over 60% of annual arrivals. Visitors from farther afield tend to be business-oriented, as a lack of marketing in the main global tourism markets – the USA and Europe – has seen Bahrain trail in the wake of more established regional tourism centers such as the UAE, Oman and Qatar. “The government has decided that this is an area that requires development,” explains the authority’s chief executive, Mohammed Nass. “The private sector will be the engine for growth, with the new authority acting more as a regulator than an operator.”

Bahrain’s deep cultural links with millennia of civilizations lends the country an archaeological pastiche unmatched in the region

Strides forward have been taken in this area, with delegations from Russia, Germany, France and the UK having been recieved. Two US travel operators have also undertaken to market Bahrain. As Nass points out: “Tourism goes from licensing to promotion to what we call gift-wrapping the country. To gift-wrap, you need to have gifts.”

In Bahrain, these are numerous and varied. The Bahrain National Museum is considered the finest in the region. The thousands of burial mounds that pepper Bahrain's landscape date back 3,000 years to the Dilmun civilization, one of the ancient world’s greatest trading peoples. The Barbar Temple complex, dating from around 3,000 BC and the Qalat Al Bahrain site, the ancient capital of the Dilmun civilization, was recently declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Site development projects to build cafés, information centers and provide these venerable structures with contemporary and artistic lighting are underway.

More recent construction activity includes multi-billion mixed use tourism developments such as the Durrat Al Bahrain, the Amwaj Islands and the Al Areen resort. Singaporean hotel chain Banyan Tree has invested heavily in Bahrain and has a $170 million hotel and desert spa at the Al Areen development and plans to build several more such resorts across the GCC to cater to the surge in MICE visitors. Numerous new four- and five-star hotels have been constructed or are under construction, while the Directorate of Tourism Affairs had received applications for almost 50 more by the end of last year. An $800 million investment by Ithmaar Bank is transforming Bahrain’s main public beach, Al Jazair.