Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Tourism potential in Jordan 2023
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is that tourism products in Jordan are not attractive enough to improve tourism revenues and engage a wider range of tourists.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
Madaba receives the second-highest number of international tourists visiting Jordan and the lowest number of local tourists. International tourists pass through Madaba and do not spend the night; local tourists do not visit it. International tourists do not have enough activities to engage in during the evening. Hence, they prefer to sleep in other locations. Domestic tourism is relatively expensive, and there is not enough marketing to visit Madaba, and also, the activities packaging is not attractive enough for the different local tourist personas.
Aqaba has a high number of local tourists. UNDP has been working with the local authorities on Jordan's only marine life reserve. Littering especially observed by local tourists, is a serious problem in Aqaba and a major threat to the marine life in Aqaba.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
According to the Ministry of Tourism in Jordan, in 2019, Madaba received the second-highest number of tourists (along with Jerash), around 467K out of 4.5 million visitors who spent at least one night in Jordan. Comparatively, Petra received 1.1 million visitors in the same year. Madaba's central location should encourage more visitors to include it in their itinerary. It is close to the capital Amman, to the Dead Sea, which is also a popular tourist destination. In 2019 and 2021, Madaba was the least-visited destination by local tourists, with less than 1500 people. These are examples of the pressing need and an excellent opportunity to explore how to improve tourism projects in Madaba to create more work and self-reliance for its residents.
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Madaba was named the Arab Tourism Capital for 2022 by the Arab Tourism Organisation. In April 2022, a Member of the Jordanian Parliament approached the Resident Representative seeking support to improve tourism in Madaba. The team ran several activities that generated qualitative information such as international travellers' personas, impressions of domestic tourism through radio mining, and ideas for interventions co-ideated with stakeholders.
We completed a sentiment analysis of TripAdvisor and several immersion trips.
The trends noticed were:
Madaba is the least visited site by local tourists.
Petra is the most visited by all tourists.
Arab tourists are the highest number of tourists visiting Jordan.
Alternative tourism in Madaba is overlooked, as tourist guides and offices are comfortable with traditional tours.
Local guides in Madaba have the challenge of licensing, which is expensive and requires language skills.
Cooperation is not noted between the tourist and local guides.
Tourists are interested in stories related to historical sites.
Madaba is missing from the UNDSS Jordan Hotel List, which lists hotels in different locations and categorises them based on level of safety. UN staff must use only hotels in this list that UNDSS approves, or a security assessment must be done for any hotel not approved.
Tourism products and experiences throughout Jordan do not "wow" visitors or go above and beyond to impress.
They often resort to duplication, kitsch, and average or below-average quality.
Tourism products and experiences are often overpriced.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
The Accelerator Lab dedicated its resources to exploring, mapping, and experimenting with knowledge and solutions that could improve tourism in Madaba while creating income for the local community. Our added value is in the conventional and unconventional methods we use to produce learning. We can absorb the learning on these themes without disrupting the daily work of the other pillars or partners. We were also cost-efficient as we used a modest budget to run several activities to ensure diversity of knowledge.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
After its success in grabbing the visitors' attention and engagement, Reveal Madaba open-air exhibition is preparing for its full launch with new content and designs in early 2024.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Madaba Tourism Directorate
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
Collaborating on identifying tourism opportunities in Jordan, facilitating access to information or people, participating in workshops, and granting space and support to run experiments in the city.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Shababuna Ezweih
What sector does our partner belong to?
Civil Society
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
They are a grassroots solution. We work with them on an experiment of the open-air exhibition on intangible cultural heritage.
The non-profit company will measure how this exhibition would improve tourist night activities by offering a self-guided tour around the city.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
Yes
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Aqaba Marine Life Reserve
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
Designing an open-air exhibition in Aqaba
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
Core question: how can we improve tourism products to engage tourists more in Jorda?
Subquestions: Who is already working on tourism in the Madaba governorate? What are they doing at both grassroots and institutional efforts? What experiments can the Accelerator Lab test with grassroots solutions to improve tourism in Madaba? How can we monetise tourism products to become profitable? How can we scale the products in other cities in Jordan? How can we create awareness regarding littering in Aqaba? How can we attract local visitors to the marine life reserve in Aqaba? How can we create public space interventions that withstand vandalism?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Test, Grow
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Working with the local community and officials through participatory design will increase their ownership of the final solutions and ensure that these products can be managed with the available resources.
Prototyping will help us test for usability and desirability with low resources before launching products at scale. Prototyping is not commonly used within the organisations and groups we meet with. Therefore, to see that they are starting to speak the language of small test scaling is brilliant.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Understanding the personas and their user journey is a good tool for identifying opportunities to design and run additional experiments. The experiments of tourism products would be tailored according to these personas.
The experiment with the open-air exhibition attracted the interest of several government bodies and officials. They liked that it was an experiment with the potential to improve the experience afterwards. The experiment shows the importance of running prototypes before launching a project at scale. We are gaining many insights on how to improve the final product.
An important question that we will explore and are still unsure about the source of data about it is how to monetise the products in profitably.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
There are two pathways to grow the work in Madaba; the first is to take the knowledge product mentioned above to the government, donor agencies, and the private sector to see what and how they can use these learnings. The second pathway is to replicate this pilot in other governorates in Jordan. UNDP Jordan colleagues have had conversations with municipalities in other parts of Jordan eager to improve tourism and for UNDP to help.
We are still exploring options with Aqaba city as the project is starting in end of Q3.
END OF ACTION LEARNING PLAN: Thank you! The form saves automatically and your submission has been recorded. You may now exit this window.
8Decent work and economic growth
11Sustainable cities and communities
14Life below water
