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World’s largest ‘Slip n’ Slide’ to be built in Jordan

No bathing suits, please.
[additional-authors]
September 3, 2015

This article first appeared on The Media Line.

The desert kingdom of Jordan might seem like an unlikely location for the world’s largest water slide. Breaking the record for the longest “Slip n’ Slide”, the long sheet of thin plastic that becomes slippery when wet, is designed as a gesture of little Jordan’s ability to compete with the giants in the profitable world of tourism, organizers said.

An opening of the slide at the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea, will showcase the many wonders that Jordan has to offer to foreign tourists, hopes Monaco Business Development, the company behind the project. From there the slide will travel around the country visiting the capital Amman and key tourist sites at Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba – no easy feat considering the slide weighs around 5 or 6 tons.

The development company would not reveal the exact length of their slide but confirmed their intention to beat the current record of 1,975 feet held by one in the United States.

“It’s symbolic that Jordan, in this region, can take on the world if you put your heart into it,” Mona Naffa, Monaco Business Development’s director, told The Media Line.

The one-piece, plastic slide was hand made in Jordan in order to support local jobs, Naffa said, adding that her company was committed to using out-of-the-box ideas “to showcase Jordan in the mainstream media.” The local company previously staged the largest floating human image, when a collection of hotel workers formed a giant peace symbol on the Dead Sea last year.

At the beginning, the slide will be open only to invited guests. After that, a fee will be charged but organizers hope to arrange subsidies for poorer local children, Naffa said. Conservation of water and the cultural sensitivities of Jordanians will also be taken into account at the events.

“We are a moderate country… (but) we are also realistic… we have a website with a strict dress code – no bathing suits,” Naffa said, suggesting that shorts and tee-shirts were a better option. Water will be saved through recycling, she added.

Jordan has few natural resources like gas or oil, and tourism is an essential part of its economy.

“It’s critical – 10% of the GDP for the country (is from tourism),” Matt Loveland, the co-founder and general director of Experience Jordan tours, told The Media Line. “(Tourism is) the highest employer of people in Jordan – the national economy depends on it.”

But tourism has been hard pressed by ongoing political and security concerns in the Middle East following the outbreak of violence in Iraq and Syria and to a lesser extent Egypt. According to statistics from the Jordanian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the country received just over 5 million visitors in 2014, down from over 8 million in 2010 prior to the start of the Arab Spring.

Bookings have fallen by as much as 50%, Loveland said, even though there has been no violence in Jordan, and it is safe to visit. The Jordanian government and Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities are doing what they can to bring tourists back, Loveland said, but concluded that the misperception is hard to reverse.

“People hear about a suicide bomber in Baghdad and they think of Jordan and the Middle East… but its several hundred kilometers away in another country,” he explained.

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