Is Petra ready to be a member in the world 7-wonders? And is being a world wonder will boost Petra as a destination for tourists?

No doubt Petra is a magnificent landmark; personally I found it strange that it wasn’t among world’s current 7 wonders, maybe because it was discovered in the 18th century.

Reviewing the newspaper few days ago, a report about hotels in Petra and their miserable situation, 40 of them are facing being closed due to banks loans. This is not the first time, I remember 2 or 3 years ago same situation until the government took the initiative to support those hotels to promote themselves locally and it worked, but it seems that it wasn’t enough.

One of the main reasons according to the report is that tourists tend to spend the night in Aqaba or campsites but not in these hotels. Petra and surrounding area is full of interesting places to visits; in addition to Petra which is large, there is also Little Petra, Ammarien Bedouin Campsite, Wadi Mousa and ElBedha, I believe tourists will need at least 2 days to see all of that.

Hundreds of thousands visit the city every year, and I believe the viral effect should play a major role here, if they like what they saw they will probably tell people to visit it, which should lead to a relatively fast growth in number of visitors, or is this the ideal number of visitors that the city can attract?

If not then what is the reason, is it the chaos that surrounds Jordan? Or bad visitor experience? Or could it be the lack of marketing efforts to promote Petra?

I believe that there should be a special division in the ministry of tourism that focus on promoting Petra globally; enhance visitors experience, introduce more activities and places to visits, giveaways, brochures, advertising… etc, a percentage of yearly revenues could be a budget for such activities, I believe Petra deserves more, but will this new vote will help, I hope so.