Petra’s Visitor Rebound Leaves Its Hotels Nearly Empty

Petra counted 362,215 visitors through September 2026, down 2.8 percent from a year earlier, as foreign arrivals fell 17.8 percent and Jordanian day trips rose 26.6 percent.

Classified hotels in the rose-red city ran at 13 percent occupancy in late September. The gate can look busy. The rooms in Wadi Musa do not.

Petra’s 2025 Rebound Stopped Short of the Peak

The Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority put 2025 visits at 582,550, up 27 percent from 457,215 in 2024. Foreign visitors rose 45 percent to 373,752, or 64 percent of the year’s total. That bounce followed the 2024 collapse in visitor numbers, when foreign arrivals dropped 74 percent to 257,284 after the Gaza war began in October 2023.

It was never a return to the last full pre-war year. PDTRA figures show more than 1.17 million people entered the site in 2023, including 985,696 foreigners. Foreign traffic had already climbed back from 135,229 in 2021, the Covid trough, to nearly a million two years later. The 2024 shock cut that recovery in half, and 2025 put back only part of it.

Abdul Razzaq Arabiyat, then director of the national tourism board, said the Gaza fighting reached operators who do not sit on any front line.

We feel the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza every day

Abdul Razzaq Arabiyat, director of the national tourism board

October 2025 was the busiest month of that partial rebound, with 81,069 visitors. December reached 53,383, almost double December 2024. Low-cost routes into the kingdom were coming back, and tour desks started to talk as if the worst had passed.

PETRA VISITORS, PDTRA COUNTS

The Central Bank of Jordan recorded national tourism income of $7.790 billion in 2025, up 7.6 percent from $7.239 billion, on a 15.3 percent rise in tourist numbers. Receipts from Europeans rose 39.8 percent that year, from Asians 32.7 percent, and from the Americas 18.8 percent. Petra itself stayed far below its 2023 peak even while the national ledger turned green.

The Spring That Lost Its Groups

The second hit arrived in March 2026, when the U.S.-Israel war with Iran shut down a large share of flights into Amman. Adnan Sawaeer, PDTRA chief commissioner, told Al Mamlaka TV that Petra bookings for March were fully cancelled. Cancellations for April had reached 60 percent, and 45 percent of May bookings were already gone, with more likely if the fighting lasted.

Bilal Rubine, spokesperson for the Jordanian Association of Travel and Tourism Offices and Companies, said about 70 percent of international flights were cancelled through April 5. He called the squeeze an “unprecedented” crisis for agencies that had just come through a short recovery from 2023 into early 2025. Mahmoud Khasawneh, head of the Jordan Society of Tourism and Travel Agents, said American and British tours were near a total wipeout, Asian programs were down about 80 percent, and European cancellations ran 50 to 60 percent.

By April, Sawaeer said hotel bookings in Petra had dropped about 80 percent against total capacity, and May cancellations were near 50 percent. Visitor numbers at the site, on Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities preliminary figures, fell 60.7 percent in March and 57.4 percent in April against the same months of 2025. Occupancy, he said, at times ran close to zero. The local economy around the Siq still lives on tourism, and there is no second industry waiting in Wadi Musa when the coaches stop.

THE TWO-WAR CALENDAR

1. October 2023: Gaza war begins and Western groups start to pull Jordan from winter and spring itineraries.
2. 2024: Petra visitors fall to 457,215, with foreign arrivals down 74 percent to 257,284.
3. 2025: Visits recover to 582,550 and foreign arrivals to 373,752, still about two-fifths below the 2023 foreign count.
4. March 2026: Petra bookings for the month are fully cancelled as regional air traffic seizes up.
5. April 2026: Hotel bookings in Petra drop about 80 percent against capacity.
6. June 11-17, 2026: PDTRA opens an online window for compensation claims covering layoffs from March 1.
7. September 2026: 43,901 people visit, 8 percent fewer than September 2025, after regular flights stabilize.

Sawaeer said the late-September bump “coincided with the resumption and stabilisation of regular flight operations.” Foreign visitors were 21,995 that month, against 25,931 in September 2025. Americans led with 3,803, then Russia with 3,004, Spain with 1,653, the United Kingdom with 1,437, and Germany with 1,178. The daily average was 1,463. That is a living site. It is not a 2023 season.

Petra welcomes 44,000 visitors last September: PDTRAhttps://t.co/10DaAf4ztg#Jordan #Jordan_News_Agency #Petra pic.twitter.com/ooAxdBQ2Yq

— Jordan News Agency (Petra)-English News (@PetranewsEN) October 1, 2026

Jordanians Keep the Turnstiles Moving

The 2026 year-to-date mix is the tell. Jordanian visitors rose to 144,536 in the first nine months, up 26.6 percent from 114,187. Arab visitors edged up 3.3 percent to 21,065. Foreign visitors fell to 184,387 from 224,296. PDTRA still leans on international traffic, but the people adding to the count this year are mostly locals.

FIRST NINE MONTHS OF 2026, PDTRA

• All visitors: 362,215, down 2.8 percent from 372,779.
• Foreign visitors: 184,387, down 17.8 percent from 224,296.
• Jordanian visitors: 144,536, up 26.6 percent from 114,187.
• Arab visitors: 21,065, up 3.3 percent from 20,389.

When March bookings vanished, Sawaeer said the authority pushed domestic programs such as Urdunna Jannah, “Our Jordan is Paradise,” and used the quiet to run maintenance. In the first half of 2026 that domestic drive drew about 118,000 participants nationwide. In 2025 Jordanians were already the single largest nationality at Petra, at 161,490, ahead of 53,797 Americans.

Early Central Bank figures through August 2026 showed the same split in money. Income from Arab visitors was up 16.3 percent and from Asian visitors 9.5 percent. Income from Europeans was down 23.7 percent, from Americans 17.1 percent, and from Jordanian expatriates 5.9 percent. The people who buy multi-night packages, not the people who drive down for the day, are the ones still missing.

The site itself remains the draw it has been since it was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1985, a 26,171-hectare Nabataean city about 240 km south of Amman in Ma’an. A visitor can still walk the official Petra trails and night walk to Al-Khazneh and Ad-Deir. The product did not change. The map around it did.

Thirteen Percent Occupancy in Late September

The Jordan Hotels Association surveyed three-, four- and five-star properties in Amman, the Dead Sea, and Petra during the third week of September. Across 133 of 166 classified hotels in those three areas, average occupancy was 38 percent. Petra was last.

CLASSIFIED HOTEL OCCUPANCY, THIRD WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 2026

Eighteen of Petra’s 25 classified hotels filed numbers. Five-star houses ran at 19 percent, four-star at 17 percent, and three-star at 2 percent. Amman’s five-star rooms, on 21 of 24 properties reporting, were at 70 percent. A capital business hotel can live on meetings and stopover traffic. A Petra three-star lives on people who stay the night after the Siq.

Fares Braizat, then PDTRA chief commissioner, said in January that hotel occupancy in Petra had risen from 7 percent in 2024 to 30 percent by the end of 2025. Prime Minister Jafar Hassan reopened the Crowne Plaza Petra on January 21, a Social Security Investment Fund property shut since 2012, with 143 units (62 rooms and 81 chalets) and about 200 jobs aimed at local hires. That was the mood before the Iran war. By late September the classified stock was back in the teens.

Why the Hotels Still Sit Empty

A day visitor from Amman pays the gate, buys lunch, and drives home. A foreign group pays the gate, a guide, a horse or buggy, two hotel nights, dinner, and a Wadi Rum camp. PDTRA estimates Petra’s hotel capacity at about 5,000 rooms. Those rooms were built for the second kind of guest.

International visitors staying overnight in Jordan pay a one-day ticket priced at 50 dinars. Arab nationals pay 30 dinars. The ticket is not the constraint. Airlift is, and so is the way large operators read a risk map. Jordan has no border with Gaza and was not the target of the 2026 Iran fighting, yet both episodes closed the same routes into Queen Alia and the same coach programs that fill Wadi Musa after dark.

WHO PAYS FOR A NIGHT IN WADI MUSA

• European and American groups: They book the rooms, and their 2026 receipts were still falling through August.
• Jordanian day visitors: They lifted the 2026 gate count 26.6 percent and rarely need a five-star bed.
• Urdunna Jannah trips: They keep restaurants and small hotels in work when inbound charters die.
• Independent bargain travelers: They find cheap suites and empty trails, and they do not replace 5,000 occupied rooms.

Harris Kupperman, an investor who walked the site in September, called it “absolutely empty” and said guides were easy to hire, with hotels cheap and the Treasury almost to yourself. Another visitor the month before said hardly anyone was there. Those are real days on a real trail. They are also the opposite of a hotel recovery. Empty monuments make good photographs. They do not make payroll in a town where tourism is the payroll.

In 2024 and 2025, more than 32 licensed hotels in the Petra region had shut and more than 700 hotel workers had lost jobs as occupancy sank into the single digits. Sawaeer said in April 2026 that those distressed houses had been put back in order and that no hotel was then closed because of the new fighting. Open and full are different states. A three-star at 2 percent occupancy is open.

5,000 Rooms Still Waiting for Groups

PDTRA in June opened a short online window for hotels, camps, restaurants, bazaars, souvenir shops, and licensed agencies to claim compensation, including for staff laid off from March 1, if they stayed in the trade through year end. The Cabinet agreed to cover interest on loans to tourism firms so they could keep paying salaries, and to ease rescheduling through the end of 2026. The tools are the tools of a holding action: keep the lights on, keep the names on the social-security list, hope the 2023 groups put Jordan back on the 2027 brochure.

Sawaeer said Petra would use the quiet for works and upkeep. That is rational. It does not change the demand curve. Foreign visitors were half of September’s 43,901 people, and the United States still led the foreign list, but the month was still 8 percent lighter than September 2025. Nine-month foreign traffic remains 17.8 percent down. The classified rooms that need those names were 13 percent full in the third week of September.

Two wars in three years taught the same lesson to the desks that used to fill those beds. Jordan can be at peace and still sit inside a no-fly week. Domestic programs can keep the Siq from going silent. They cannot, on present numbers, put 5,000 rooms back to work.