Mon 16 August, 2004 03:39

By Fiona O'Brien

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The website instructs tourists to "Rediscover Lebanon". It promises beaches, ski slopes, ruins, nightlife -- something for everyone packaged in a tiny country more often remembered for its war and kidnappings.

And the tourists are responding. From rich Saudis seeking a summer away from the Gulf's hot deserts to fashionable Europeans wanting memories more exotic than a package tour to Mallorca, holiday-makers are hitting Lebanon to see for themselves.

Lebanon was once known as the Switzerland of the Middle East, its capital Beirut as an oriental Paris. Torn apart by civil war from 1975-1990, its appeal foundered. Hotels were shelled, foreigners taken hostage, streets ruled by snipers.

More than a decade later, Lebanon wants to put that past behind it. In 2004, Beirut spent about $1 million (540,000 pounds) on a series of slick adverts, which together with www.rediscoverlebanon.com aim to revive the country's magnetism.

Tourism statistics suggest the drive is working. In the first five months of the year -- before the main summer season -- there were 48 percent more tourists than in the same period last year. Arrivals are creeping back to pre-war levels.

Minister for Tourism Ali Hussein Abdullah said the most encouraging signal was that in April and May the number of European tourists exceeded the number of Arabs for the first time since the war.

"Before the war we always had more European than Arab tourists, except in the summer when many Gulfis come," he said.

"Everything went up this year, those from Africa, from America, but it was the Europeans that was really remarkable."

Summer in Lebanon still belongs to Arabs from the Gulf. Plush hotels in the mountains outside Beirut flood with Saudis and Kuwaitis, four-wheel drives with Gulf number plates and tinted windows clog the roads.

On Beirut's Hamra shopping street, Gulf women enveloped in their black hijab dress weave their way between young Lebanese women in barely-there skirts and stilettos. There may be cultural differences, but there is still an Arab appeal.

"We have been here a lot of times because it's an Arab country," said one Saudi too shy to give her name. Last year, 160,000 Saudis visited Lebanon, 16 percent of all tourists.

"We are comfortable here. People are nice, we see other Saudis and there are mountains."

Part Muslim, part Christian, part Druze, Lebanon has an anything-goes attitude integral to the image it is trying to rebuild. Superficially at least, tradition sits comfortably beside modernity, cultures mix but avoid a clash.

It is undeniable that Lebanon packs a lot within its borders. The food is famous, nightlife buzzing, climate kind. And so small, visitors really can ski and swim the same day.

Elisabeth Balthay, a French lawyer working in London, came to Lebanon for a holiday, inspired by her father's tales of the Baalbek, Byblos and Beirut he visited often before the war.

"Most people are under the impression that Beirut is extremely dangerous, filled with Israeli tanks and that the streets are speckled black by masked Hizbollah gunmen looking for Westerners to take hostage," she said.

"I wanted to see the sites of Byblos spanning from the neolithic through to the crusader fortress, Baalbek which was meant to be bigger than the Parthenon and Tyre which has a hippodrome you could actually feel.

"What is good about Lebanon? The food, the quaffable wine, the heat, warm hospitality, and more than anything the sites."

More than a million tourists came to Lebanon in 2003, but Abdullah wants to see that number rise fourfold within five to six years. He wants to see more package tours, more health tourism, more development beyond the country's coastal plain.

He said tourism revenue was roughly 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product, compared to around 24 percent in 1974, and sees expansion as a way to help Lebanon out of economic crisis.

"We can't be an agricultural country or an industrial country," he said. "First we have to be a touristic country. I am trying to encourage investors, especially Lebanese who live outside."

Of those, there are plenty. About four million Lebanese live in Lebanon, an estimated 15 million outside. There are more Lebanese in Brazil than at home.

Lebanon would be hard pressed to manage without money sent by the diaspora, but wants its absent citizens to remember where they came from too. Abdullah sees them also as potential adverts for a country trying hard to reclaim its tourism crown.

"Last year we had 70,000 French tourists," he said. "But we should get more. We have about 300,000 Lebanese living in France. So if every Lebanese could send just one tourist ... imagine."