Launching La Table is more than opening a restaurant, it’s making a meaningful, long-term investment. With limited savings, choosing the wrong location would turn a dream into a risk. To avoid guessing, I turned to data.
The goal was simple: find a town in Lebanon where visitors (locals and tourists) already show strong interest, yet the restaurant market remains underserved.
Lebanon’s tourism and investment patterns often move in opposite directions. Some towns attract visitors but receive no development, while others receive projects despite having little demand.
For a new restaurant, this imbalance makes it difficult to know where genuine opportunity lies. I needed a location that is not saturated or speculative, but strategically overlooked.
Step 1: Scanning the Chaos for Opportunity – Lebanon as a whole
The national view shows two categories:
High-tourism towns with no initiatives (Blue): attractive but saturated with existing restaurants.
Funded towns with low tourism (Orange): received investments but struggle with attracting visitors.
We’re looking for a true blue diamond: a high-potential (human intuition), high-traffic location (tourism index), with unserved demand (number of restaurants, 0 project initiated).
Step 2: The first zoom – Targeting Zgharta
We must narrow the focus from the whole country to a high-potential region. We start by targeting the beautiful Zgharta District.
Safe option: a district away from saturation (low competition) yet rich in natural beauty and tourism interest (mid to high). It becomes the logical next step for deeper exploration. (Action for Viewer: Please use the District filter and select Zgharta District.)
Step 3: The second zoom – Finding the Restaurant Gap
One town rises above the rest: Beit Obeid, Zgharta District
High tourism demand (index: 9).
Low supply: few restaurants exist (1 restaurant), minimal competition.
No recent initiatives, meaning the opportunity remains untouched.
Visitors are already coming, but the market has not responded. This is exactly the type of gap a new restaurant should fill.
In Beit Obeid, high demand, low competition, and authentic natural beauty come together, making it a place where La Table can truly belong and elevate the town’s charm. By moving from a national overview to a focused district analysis, the data revealed a location where potential and opportunity meet.
But beyond numbers, choosing Beit Obeid reflects vision, intuition, and respect for place.
Tourism data often feels like numbers on a page—until the story behind them comes to life. When we look at Lebanon’s districts, the picture isn’t just about restaurants, facilities, or index scores. It’s a story of imbalances, surprises, hidden strengths, and underserved demand—a landscape full of tension between what exists and what’s possible.
This is the story the data tells.
A Country of Contrasts
Lebanon’s districts may share the same geography, but the similarities stop there. Some areas have built robust infrastructures ready to welcome visitors. Others attract crowds despite having little to offer them. And a few districts—unexpectedly—find themselves stuck with heavy services but underperforming tourism.
At first glance, it looks like a typical dataset. But look closer, and the real narrative emerges.
Middle — The Twists & Tension: Who’s Thriving, Who’s Falling Behind, and Who’s Hiding Untapped Potential
This is where the story becomes interesting—because the data doesn’t follow the stereotypes. The heroes aren’t always who you expect, and the greatest opportunities appear where no one is looking.
Twist 1 — The Powerhouses: Districts Where Tourism and Services Move in Sync
A handful of districts are the clear protagonists of this story.
Baabda stands tall with over 630 facilities and a tourism index above 3.5. A strong, reliable performer.
Keserwan shine with well-balanced services and tourism score around 3.2.
Matn and Mount Lebanon delivers both volume and quality, blending high restaurant presence with solid tourism.
These are the districts where supply meets demand, where investment seems to be paying off, and where the tourism ecosystem is already working.
But their stability sets up the real tension…
Twist 2 — The Surprise Underdogs: High Tourism, Low Services
Here’s the unexpected revelation:
Some districts attract more visitors than their services can support.
Nabatieh: The Plot Twist Nobody Saw Coming
Tourism index: ~4.2 (the highest of all districts) Restaurants + facilities: modest
Visitors are coming—but the district simply isn’t built to serve them. This imbalance isn’t a weakness; it’s the biggest opportunity in the entire dataset.
Zahle: A Rising Star With Few Services Available
Low facilities but strong tourism (4.1)
Tourism is outpacing infrastructure, exposing a growing service gap.
These districts bring tension into the narrative—demand is strong, supply is weak, and businesses have the chance to fill the void.
Twist 3 — The Strugglers: High Infrastructure, Low Tourism
Not every district is a hero in this story. Some are weighed down by expectations they’re not meeting.
Akkar
471 other facilities (highest on the chart)
But tourism index only ~2.8
The services are ready, but the tourists aren’t coming. A district with capacity but little demand.
Baalbek-Hermel
Strong facility base, but tourism index is among the lowest.
Byblos: The Most Surprising Letdown
Despite adequate infrastructure… Tourism index: only ~2.2, one of the lowest values.
This is the conflict at the heart of the data: Some districts don’t need more services—they need more visitors.
What Lebanon Needs to Do Next
Every story needs an ending. This one ends with a roadmap.
If you are a policymaker:
Invest in Akkar, Baalbek-Hermel, and Byblos through tourism promotion, cultural activation, events, and awareness campaigns.
These districts don’t need more restaurants—they need reasons for people to visit.
If you are an investor or business owner:
Focus on the high-opportunity, high-demand markets:
Nabatieh
Zahle
These districts have tourism beyond their capacity, making them perfect targets for new restaurants, cafés, lodging, and visitor services.
If you are a tourism strategist:
Sustain and enhance performance in:
Baabda
Keserwan
Zahlé
Matn
Nabatieh
These districts already have working ecosystems—optimize them rather than reset them.
Final Thought:
The data doesn’t just describe Lebanon’s tourism landscape—it tells a story of imbalance, momentum, and opportunity. A story where some regions thrive effortlessly, some struggle silently, and others hide the greatest potential for growth.
It’s a story still being written. And the next chapter depends on what we do with the insights we have today.
Do any of you know a small business owner?
If you do, you probably know how incredibly difficult it is to run a small business.
Now, let’s imagine opening and running a small business in Lebanon where we are hit by both economic and political instability.
Let us introduce you to Ghassan Beyrouthy. A proud owner of a small Hotel Bel Azur, it is a family run business in Jounieh.
Bel Azur is facing several issues and challenges. These issues are common within the Hotel industry; however, the repercussions of these challenges are heightened due to Lebanon current economic crisis and its political instability.
Bel Azur Beach Club thrives during the summer, attracting citizens, expats and foreigners who flock to Jounieh to enjoy the beautiful Lebanese summers and shores.
However, operating as a Beach Club poses great challenges with revenues during the winter season. The demand season of beach clubs, the current Lebanese economic and political climate make operations for Bel Azur unsustainable.
The challenges of low revenue are also attributed to the winter’s high number of cancellations of premium rooms. The premium rooms are a major revenue stream of hotels allowing Bel Azure to make nice profit margins.
While in the summer, Bel Azur is able to book premium rooms with a low cancellation risk rate. During the winter season, demand severely drops and cancellations rise widening the revenue gap. Each cancellation represents the opportunity cost of an empty room. Furthermore, it causes an increased operational cost, wasted resources and a disruption in staff schedules.
Over the years, hotels in the industry have been investing more technologically. In the industry, the dominant way to secure reservations is online through a strong digital presence.
Unlike many of its competitors in Jounieh, Bel Azur, has struggled to manage and push its digital presence. The lack of a strong digital presence puts Bel Azur at a significant disadvantage.
Competitor’s in Jounieh have strong connections with online booking platforms, a strong social media team and push targeted marketing strategies. Thus, competitors are able to capture a larger share of reservations during the low demand in the winter season.
For Bel Azur, its low online presence impacts its revenue particularly in the winter months when every booking counts.
By concentrating on drawing in business travelers, Bel Azur can greatly increase its revenue and occupancy rates. The corporate segment exhibits the lowest cancellation rates.
Bel Azur can establish itself as the perfect location for business gatherings and events by making investments in conference spaces and business facilities. In addition to drawing a consistent flow of business travelers, this calculated action will lessen the effects of seasonal variations, especially in the off-peak months.
We leveraged our close personal relationship with the owners of the event planning company to connect them with Bel Azur Hotel. We were aware of their struggle to expand beyond their existing customer base, which was primarily located in the Matn area. They were exclusively hosting events in that region and were looking for ways to grow. Recognizing the opportunity, we introduced them to Bel Azur’s owner and proposed a strategic partnership: making Bel Azur their go-to venue for events. This would not only give the event planning company a strong presence in Jounieh but also allow them to extend their reach into the Keserwan area. As part of the deal, they would receive exclusive access to the venue, ensuring no competition, as well as marketing support through the hotel’s channels to boost their visibility. The event planning company would also benefit from discounted rates for their clients, along with priority access to the venue during peak seasons. Both parties saw the mutual benefits, and the deal was agreed upon, setting the stage for a promising collaboration that would help both businesses thrive.
Meet the Event Planning Team
Small businesses face great challenges especially currently in Lebanon plagued by economic crisis and political instability making it a challenging environment for entrepreneurs to navigate. Through simple data exploration, we identified a struggling family business, Bel Azur Hotel.
By connecting Bel Azur with an event planning company, we created a partnership that tackled the seasonal revenue dips and cancellations. Furthermore, the partnership allowed the event planning company to expand its reach to new markets. Hence, the partnership we assisted in creating is mutually beneficial for two small business in Lebanon.
The impact we created as four university students with limited work experience proves that simple, organized and concise efforts can lead to big positive changes.
If we could help not one but two small business in this extremely tough environment, imagine the difference you could do in your own community!
The question is not if you can do it, it’s will do you it?
As part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). Goal 8 is focused on “Promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. In the city of Beirut, a group of us within the Lebanese ministry of tourism were teamed up with a group of people from the UN development program, and we were tasked to focus on SDG Goal 8.
We were thinking about a pressing challenge in the situation we are in now: if Lebanon is perceived as a tourist destination. Potential tourists/visitors to Lebanon always have something stopping them from visiting Lebanon, especially those who do not know much about it and have not visited it before.
These perceptions were highly influenced by the way the media portrays Lebanon with all its economic and political instabilities. We questioned what we could do to change this narrative, and how could we shift people’s perceptions of what Lebanon is to influence them to travel to this country full of rich culture and breathtaking landscapes.
The graph above shows the change in Lebanon’s GDP over the years, indicating a sudden fall after 2019. In the economic situation which we are currently in, Lebanon needs something to help revitalize this situation and help it grow again. For that reason, we launched a program to revitalize the Lebanese economy through tourism enhancement.
We analyzed several sources of data and came up with the visualization under. The visualization indicates there is a direct correlation between Lebanon’s GDP and tourism receipts. Up till 2018 and 2019 (shaded 1), we see Lebanon’s GDP and tourism receipts both at their highest points. After those years, we see a sudden drop in 2020 in both indicators (shaded 2).
For this reason, we did the following:
We invited travel bloggers, and social media influencers from around the world and we specifically targeted those with a large amount of following and influence. The goal of this was not to bring them so that they could showcase Lebanon to their following base. The goal behind this was to immerse them in the Lebanese culture and the activities and experiences they will cherish from being in Lebanon. That way, what they share with their audience is authentic, and true to the emotions they felt.
We also targeted other areas of improvement which were important for the success of the project. Those are regarding: infrastructure, marketing, and local community involvement. We coordinated with municipalities, as well as local businesses to ensure that all our key points are addressed to enhance the tourist experience in our country. We think that our concentrated efforts to enhance the tourism experience and actively include local communities are what will be responsible for revitalizing the Lebanese economy in the right direction again. In addition to stimulating the travel and tourism industry, our project will potentially have a positive knock-on effect on the whole economy, generating jobs and encouraging sustainable growth.
