The press continues to focus its attention on the negative impact of events in the Eastern Mediterranean on worldwide tourism. The Serbian-Albanian conflict, as well as Israeli attacks on the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip have become rather hot topics of discussion these days.

However, these problems do not appear to have harmed tourism to the Eastern Mediterranean. On the contrary, countries such as Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Greece, Egypt, Croatia, Libya, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Italy are all experiencing a real boom in tourism. One organization contributing to the situation, perhaps, is the Australia-based Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association (EMTA) which promotes tourism to all Eastern Med countries.

The principle of this unique association is that since it started in 2001 politics was banned from its organizational charter. Indeed, irrespective of political considerations and relations, all destinations in the Eastern Mediterranean should be equally promoted. That’s good news for tourists, as eTurboNews explains.

Israel , Syria, The Palestinian Authority and Israel, Serbia and Croatia all appear on the same bill despite the obvious political tensions between them. Australian travelers want to travel to all these destinations and don’t want political enmities to get in their way.

In February and March 2008, EMTA organized seven travel industry workshops giving its members the opportunity to learn about more than 15 Eastern Med countries in just a single evening.

Photo:© hamalka

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