Port, airport, tourism, Eritrea now wants to “sell” its coastline

ASSAB, Eritrea, Feb 13 (AFP) — Eritrea will on Monday inaugurate a new hotel on its Red sea coast, the first step in an effort to boost tourism hitherto hampered by the effects of travel restriction in the tiny Horn of Africa country.

But it’s a very small step since the hotel, a state property, has only 25 rooms. It is in Gelalo, which is tucked between the port towns of Massawa and Assab.

“We built it (the hotel) there because of the under-development in the region,” about 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Massawa, said Hagos Woldu, tourism promotion director in the Eritrean tourism ministry.

“This coast has a tourism potential with its landscape and the Red Sea of course. People can also go on camel safaris, but hunting is not allowed,” said Hagos.

“Gelalo is one of the hottest places on the planet,” he added.

Visiting the region, a traveler has the impression of being in Ireland, then on Mongolia’s steppes; grassy hills, savannas amidst acacia trees, ancient volcanoes and sprawling lava fields, all unevenly distributed.

The hotel in Assab “is the property of the government but we also invite private investors,” Hagos added.

Meanwhile on Dese island, south of Massawa, a private investor has started constructing another hotel. More are planned, Hagos explained.

Grotty infrastructure is another bottleneck to the ambition of reaping a tourism windfall.

“Accessing the coast is still difficult but the authorities are working to improve the road,” Hagos added. As for the road linking Assab and Massawa, the two well-off towns along the country’s Red Sea coast, plans are in the works to pave it in three or four years.

At Massawa, an international airport will soon be opened to ease transport to this region, Hagos added, without giving an exact date. At Assab, there is a domestic airstrip.

But check-points and travel restriction in this country have stymed rapid expansion of tourism. These measures are for “security reasons”, according to Hagos.

“Currently, Eritrean authorities do not have figures on the tourism traffic in the region of Massawa and Assab,” said Abadi Amare, an official in the statistics department in the tourism ministry. “A tourism office was opened in Assab five months ago,” Abadi added.

Since its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea last had a tourism boom in 1996 when some 137,000 tourists visited the country,

A deadly 1998-2000 border war with its vast southern neighbour Ethiopia only worsened the sparsely-developed tourism sector. Statistics for 2003, the latest, show an arrival of 80,000 tourists.

Asmara is also planning to revamp the port of Assab, whose activities were hampered during the war that ended with the signing of the Algiers agreement in 2000. Ethiopia stopped using the port and relocated to Djibouti port.

To revamp Assab which already has an airport for local flights, “we are planning to make it a free port,” Hagos said. “And we hope that when relations with Ethiopia get better, they will come back to Assab.”

Relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa still remain frosty despite the peace agreement signed in 2000.