Vicky Xu / Shanghai Daily news
Local travel agencies announced that they had not organized package tours to
blast-hit Amman recently, a reporter of the Xinwen Evening News learnt this
morning, hours after the series of terrorist blasts on Wednesday night that
rocked three hotels in Amman, the capital of Jordan.
"Jordan isn't a travel
destination popular with local people," Wang Yan, a manager with Shanghai
Airlines Tours International Co. Ltd. (SATI) said. Although local travel
agencies doing international business have been granted permission to organize
package tours to Jordan, they are attracting few customers. "Few people ask for
the tour. We organize only a few Jordan-bound trips in all the year," Wang
said.
Besides SATI, China Travel International Co. Ltd. is also among the few
local travel agencies who have ever organized tours there. Both said no groups
were travelling in Jordan when the blasts went off. In addition, they aren't
sending tour groups to Jordan for the time being.
There's no direct air route
linking Amman and Shanghai. Planes reach Amman via Doha in Qatar or Dubai in the
Arab Emirates. The inconvenience could be another reason why such a small number
of local travel agencies are organizing tours there.
Despite the blasts,
local airports will still see flights to the region taking-off tonight as
normal. This afternoon at around 1:00pm and 3:00pm, flights from Doha and Dubai
are expected to arrive here, perhaps carrying some passengers from Amman.