Syria Today | Good Things Come in Small Packages

Good Things Come in Small Packages

Words Dania Akkad
Photos Bridgette Auger, Syrian Society for the Conservation of Wildlife

In most popular Syrian guidebooks, the town of Salamiyeh, just 30 km from Hama and its famous waterwheels, barely gets a mention, if at all.

For the majority of foreign tourists – as well as Syrians – Salamiyeh is a mere dot on the map on the way to more well-known sites. Yet in this quiet but rapidly growing farm town of nearly 200,000 people, there is a rich history and depth of cultural diversity unimaginable to those simply passing through on a bus. It’s a fact that is true for much of the country and one that a handful of Syrians are trying to change.

Syria’s niche tourism sector is by all accounts in its infancy and largely untouched by the Ministry of Tourism. Yet many of its hopeful pioneers believe the country is on the cusp of a breakthrough, one which they say will satisfy a growing demand among global travellers for unique cultural experiences while at the same time bringing new sources of income to a wider range of Syrian pockets.

Off the beaten track
Among these pioneers are small entrepreneurs like Kamal Yazji. Two years ago, the 35-year-old engineer who grew up in Salamiyeh, turned an apartment on the edge of his hometown into the four-room Nairoz Hotel, named after his wife.

The Aga Khan Development Network, whose representatives often travelled to Salamiyeh to work on local projects but had never been able to find a comfortable place to stay, assisted Yazji with the project, bringing in an expert from the organisation’s Serena chain of boutique hotels.

The Nairoz was Salamiyeh’s first lodging and has since hosted hundreds of visitors who once would have stayed – and spent their money – in Hama or Homs. But more important than the money and new jobs the business has created, says Yazji, is the opportunity to introduce visitors to his hometown.

Called the ‘Mother of Cairo’, Salamiyeh is the town from which the persecuted Ismaili imams left for Egypt in the 10th century to start the Fatimid Dynasty. Its history also includes a number of notable farmers and authors.

Today, more than half of the town’s populace, which weaves through new traffic-lit streets on motorbikes and lives in houses decorated with pieces of ancient Roman columns, are Ismaili. The headquarters of the Ismaili Council of Syria are here, along with the beautifully restored Imam Ismail Mosque, named after the imam buried at the site. There is also the Shmeis Citadel, a first-century BC site perched just outside the city with a breathtaking view of the Orontes River Valley, as well as a fascinating system of old churches running underneath the current township, entered via locations only the locals seem to know.

Clearly, without a guide, the richness of Salamiyeh is easily lost to an outsider, a fact that Yazji hopes will change as more visitors come to town and more Salamiyeh residents, apparently famous for their hospitality, embrace the idea of catering to tourists in a more formalised way.

“There is something about the culture of this place, something intangible,” Yazigi said when asked about what makes his hometown special. “People should come and spend some time with this culture.”

Cultural experiences wanted
Global travellers are increasingly looking for an ‘experience’, rather than a standard holiday. Perhaps no one knows this better than May Bendki Mamarbachi, owner of Damascus-based Beroia Travel & Tourism. Four years ago, Mamarbachi opened Beit Al Mamlouka, the Old City’s first restored Arabic house turned boutique hotel, kick-starting a boom in the number of such lodgings in the process.

After selling the hotel, Mamarbachi (who, unlike the town of Salamiyeh, is mentioned in several guidebooks) founded her boutique tour company last year, offering a unique set of holiday experiences, including special trekking adventures and culinary tours.

“People today in tourism are looking for something local and not a five-star, classical hotel,” she said. “They want personal attention.”

To that end, Mamarbachi kicked off a specialised culinary tour of Damascus last May. London-based chef Anissa Helou leads visitors through various markets and restaurants to sample authentic Syrian cuisine and learn about the ingredients that go into it. The tour has grabbed the attention of a number of international media publications, including the Financial Times of London.

It’s this kind of focused, small-scale experience and word-of-mouth attention, as opposed to mass tourism, that will benefit Syria in the long run, Mamarbachi said. By focusing on mass tourism, Syria runs the risk of “losing its soul”, she said.

“Syria has to unveil itself very slowly. We want people to come to enjoy Syria and to enjoy our traditions and our culture,” she said.

The birth of Syrian ecotourism
Osama al-Nouri, secretary of The Syrian Society for the Conservation of Wildlife, agrees. Forty kilometres southeast of Aleppo on the edge of the massive Al-Jaboul wetland, his organisation is currently working to transform an Ottoman-era salt mine into an ecolodge.

Near prime bird-watching spots and within walking distance of villages where locals live in the country’s famous beehive-shaped houses, the lodge will provide accommodation to tourists, rent out bikes and, one day, maybe even offer trips through the wetland in a solar-powered boat.

The project is fully funded by the Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation. Progress has stalled, however, as organisers wait on the transfer of the salt mine’s property records between government agencies.

Jaboul was once the most prized source of salt in Syria, Nouri said. These days, chemical run-off and waste water from surrounding factories, farm fields and villages is polluting the wetland, endangering the wildlife which includes migratory birds which use the area as a resting point on their annual migration routes between the northern and southern hemispheres.

As well as improving the quality of the wetland, the project will also provide a much-needed economic boost to the local town, which experiences frequent blackouts and can no longer gain an income by selling Jaboul salt.

Like Mamarbachi, Nouri fears mass tourism in Syria, saying it focuses on profit and sheer visitor numbers, rather than the sustainability of the project and its impact on the local population and environment.

“There are a small number of people in Syria who see the danger of this [mass tourism] policy,” he said. “The reaction is to deal with the real strengths that we have.”

For Nouri, who also leads tourists around Syria for his company Trans-Asia-Syria, these strengths include the country’s heritage, hospitality and unique religious and archaeological sites. If Nouri has his way, he will use these assets as a starting point to develop several ecolodges like the one at Jaboul, as well as creating ecotourism reserves in areas like Jebel Abdul Aziz near Hassakeh, the Frunloq Forest near Lattakia and Abo Kobais close to Hama.

“There is no national plan for the development of ecotourism, unfortunately,” Nouri said. “We hope that we will be a model.”