While these are very early days, the return of Qatar Airways to Damascus could tempt other international carriers to put the Syrian capital back on the route map.
Is visiting a country an implicit endorsement of its leadership? Or can intrepid travelers frame it simply as a gesture of connection with its people? The situation in Syria raises these questions and more.
This is good news for travel and tourism, but what travelers and business leaders are looking for here is some semblance of consistency by the U.S. on who can come into the U.S. and how.
Syria’s tourism industry has become almost non-existent during the civil war and there may be few historical and archaeological sites to attract visitors back in the future.
Considering Beirut, Lebanon's last 30 years of civil war, it's remarkable that throughout the entire Arab Spring the city has not broken into open warfare. If the biggest loss is a drop in tourism, it's a lucky season.
Restaurants were thriving, luxury hotels were being built, and visitor arrivals were at an all-time high in 2010, but violence in neighboring Syria has kept tourists and locals at home even more so than Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war.
The hospitality industry tends to dip and rise in rhythm with regional tensions, but these historic and religious destinations will continue to attract tourist despite a lack of stability.
Along with the lives it takes, war destroys culuture and history. In the case of Syria, in can wipe a few millennia's worth of tradition of the map in one deadly shelling.