Data Visualization

Blog of the Data Visualization & Communication Course at OSB-AUB

“This is my favorite part about analytics: Taking boring flat data and bringing it to life through visualization” John Tukey

La Table: Finding the Perfect Location

La Table: Finding the Perfect Location

by | Nov 20, 2025 | Uncategorized

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 (Action for Viewer: use the Establishment Type filter and select Restaurants.) Focusing on restaurants first, 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 in an orange districts: a place with potential but still ignored. Step 2: The first zoom – Targeting Hasbaya
We must narrow the focus from the whole country to a high-potential region. We start by targeting the beautiful Hasbaya District.
The lowest point of the orange clutter: Hasbaya sits at the edge of the national clutter, away from saturation yet rich in natural beauty and tourism interest. It becomes the logical next step for deeper exploration.
(Action for Viewer: Please use the District filter and select Hasbaya District.)

Step 3: The second zoom – Finding the Restaurant Gap
One town rises above the rest:
Fardis, Hasbaya District
High tourism demand (index: 10).
Low supply: few restaurants exist (5 restaurants), 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 Fardis, 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 Fardis reflects vision, intuition, and respect for place.

Lebanon’s tourism potential is high, but a lot of it remains unsupported

by | Nov 20, 2025 | Uncategorized

Lebanon’s landscape is full of cultural, historical, and natural assets, yet tourism development across the country remains uneven. Using the UNDP Tourism Readiness dataset (1,136 towns across 25 districts), this analysis uncovers where Lebanon’s hidden tourism opportunities are and which regions lack the infrastructure to support them.

Tourism Potential Exists, But Not All Towns Are Developed

To understand tourism readiness, every town can be classified into one of four groups:

  • Developed Potential: Towns with both potential and infrastructure
  • Untapped Potential: Towns with potential but no infrastructure
  • Infrastructure Only: Towns with infrastructure but no identified potential
  • Low Potential: Towns with neither

Right away, a key insight emerges:

A considerable number of Lebanese towns have meaningful tourism potential but lack the infrastructure required to activate it.

This simple breakdown highlights that tourism potential is widespread across the country, but not always supported by visitor services such as guest houses, cafés, or restaurants.

Some areas have much larger gaps than others

When looking at infrastructure gaps by area, the differences become clearer. Some districts have potential but very little tourism infrastructure to go with it.

In particular,

  • Beqaa
  • Hermel
  • Marjeyoun

show some of the highest gap rates. These places have attractions and natural assets, but not enough facilities to support tourism activity. Meanwhile, districts like Mount Lebanon and Byblos are more developed and have infrastructure that aligns better with their tourism activity.

This chart makes it easier to see which areas are lagging behind and where new investment could make a real difference.

What this means for tourism planning

  • Putting the insights together, a simple pattern appears:
  • Many towns across Lebanon do have tourism potential
  • But a noticeable share of them don’t have the infrastructure to support visitors
  • The largest gaps show up in specific districts, not everywhere
  • Improving basic services in these places could unlock new opportunities

Instead of focusing only on areas that are already popular, these findings suggest that Lebanon has several underdeveloped regions that could become strong tourism spots if they receive proper attention.

Conclusion

Lebanon already has the natural and cultural foundations for tourism. The challenge isn’t a lack of potential, it’s the uneven distribution of infrastructure.

By identifying where the gaps are, the data gives a clear starting point for planners, municipalities, and anyone interested in local development. Investing in infrastructure in high-potential but underserved towns could help bring more balance to Lebanon’s tourism map and open opportunities in regions that are currently overlooked.