Jordan's Failure to Promote Petra

It is now only about 300 days before the end of the voting period for selecting the World's New Seven Wonders by a system of public voting (online and by phone) at the website of the "New Seven Wonders" foundation, supporting and organizing this contest.

As we know, Petra-the majestic rose city in Jordan is one of 21 candidates for the list of new 7 wonders representing the most amazing structures built by human innovation and civilizations throughout history. Petra will be fighting a tough battle to compete with a lot of magnificant places and it is very important that each "lucky" country in which a place has been selected to perform the best effort it can do for its candidate to be slected.

Jordan is doing nothing of that. There is no organized promotional campaign for Petra by the public and private sectors. The Ministry of Tourism website has no clue about the issue, and the Jordanian Tourism Board is as much ignorant while the private sctor scoring high profits did not put any effort.

This is a shame. In Jordan we are wasting money on useless promotional campaigns for political slogans no body understands while forgetting about a crucial matter that can put Petra and Jordan in the history once and far all.

I am aware that the voting system -by Internet and phone- is friendly to industrialized countries with high online access and telecommunication infrastructure and highly populous countries that can mobilize millions to vote (India, China, Egypt) and Jordan is neither technologically advanced or populous.

This puts extra responsibility on the shoulders of the government and private sector but they are failing miserably. In the absence of the governemnt role maybe the people of Jordan themselves can act to promote petra.

As an emerging bloggers community maybe we can introduce a "support Petra" icon on Jordan Planet and individual blogs to assist visitors to vote for Petra. This may not make a great difference but we will show a more "responsible" act than the government and private sector.

We still have 300 days and we can do something. Do not underestimate the strength of the Internet.

And by the way, this is how I voted (there are seven votes and the numbers here are the actual codes for the voting)

01 Acropolis (Athens, Greece)

06 Colosseum (Rome, Italy)

09 Great Wall (China)

13 Machu Picchu (Peru)

15 Petra (Jordan)

16 Pyramids of Giza (Egypt)

20 Taj Mahal (India)