The Global Meaningful Travel Map

Baraka Destinations

Experience stunning hikes, guided bike trails, local cooking classes, and unique beekeeping in a vibrant community, all while supporting sustainable tourism.

OUR EXPERIENCES
All of the experiences offered by Baraka Destinations were created in partnership with the local community to highlight their local culture and collective narrative.

Hiking: Baraka Destinations offers nine hiking routes, some of which are unguided, in the Um Qais and Pella areas. Each trail highlights a different view of the stunning scenery and vary in difficulty so as to cater to families and guest fitness levels. Guides share stories about local culture, the relationship between the villagers and the environment, and the story behind the cultural shift from an agrarian community to government jobs.
Cycling: Baraka Destinations offers guests the opportunity to embark on one of six guided bike trails of the region.
Beekeeping: Experienced local beekeepers provide a unique experience in Um Qais to uncover the fascinating behavior of honeybees. Discover how a bee colony functions and participate in honey harvest.
Cooking Classes: Guests can visit the home of a local chef and discover the recipes of some of the region’s most known dishes. An authentic experience in the heart of the village. Pairs nicely with foraging experience where guests go into the mountains to collect the wild ingredients for some of the most popular traditional dishes.
Home Cooked Meal: A home cooked meal all ingredients are sourced from local farmers and represent a menu that is unique to this part of Jordan. Meals are served at the chef’s house giving guests the opportunity to get to know the people of the village better.
Basket Weaving: Guests have the opportunity to learn the century old tradition of basket weaving with a local artist. Acquire the skills necessary to create your very own basket or coaster.
Products: Baraka sells a number of local products, such as honey, baskets, pickled goods, jams, and more, which are sourced from the local community. Activities are family friendly and appropriate for all ages.

ABOUT US
After consulting on dozens of tourism development projects, Baraka encountered many local communities desperately wanting to engage in the tourism sector, but are not succeeding, even with support from training programs and micro investments by development agencies. They are struggling to create products that tourists want and unable to reach the tourism markets alone. So we set up Baraka Destinations, a social venture that develops clusters of community owned tourism businesses, incubates them with the local owners until the business is profitable, skills are transferred and capacities are at the standard to enable tourism entrepreneurs to build their own villages into vibrant tourism destinations.

OUR IMPACT
As of 2023, Baraka Destinations has created 153 jobs with 67% of those jobs going to women and youth. We are also happy to share that 73% of the revenue generated stays within the village. In 2018, Jordan Tourism Board partnered with Tourism Cares on a Meaningful Travel Map as part of the Tourism Cares with Jordan Meaningful Travel Summit. We partnered with the Jordan Tourism Board and Tourism Cares to develop 12 pins on the Jordan Map, representing social enterprises and community tourism experiences around the country. The Map was designed to diffuse the economic benefits of tourism to smaller communities and support sustainable tourism growth.

The interactive map of Jordan can be found on the website: https://www.myjordanjourney.com/experience-meaningful-travel

DETAILS
To learn more, contact: reservations@barakadestinations.com

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