The Aqaba–Taba tourist line carried 130,000 tourists in 2025, up 52% from 2024
Lt. Gen. Eng. Kamel El-Wazir, Minister of Transport, chaired the 87th General Assembly meeting of Arab Bridge Maritime Company (AB Maritime), in the presence of Jordan's Minister of Transport, Dr. Eng. Nidal Qatamin, Eng. Mohieddin Amara representing Iraq's Minister of Transport Dr. Khaled Shwani, Major General Dr. Nehad Shaheen, Deputy Minister of Transport for Maritime Transport, and the chairman and members of the company's board. The meeting coincides with the company's celebrations of its 40th anniversary, and it reviewed the company's activity and main achievements in 2025 and approved the balance sheet and business results for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025.
The company's Director General, Adnan Al-Abadleh, stated that in 2025 the company achieved profits of $32 million, the highest since its founding, surpassing the previous record results of 2024, which reached $30 million.
He added that the company's assets at the end of 2025 reached their highest value since its founding at $229 million, as did shareholders' equity at $182.3 million, exceeding all the figures and results achieved in 2024. He noted that the record of unique achievements did not stop at these figures, pointing out that after passenger rates on the company's ships declined in past years due to the difficult and complex events and successive crises the world witnessed, which directly affected various sectors, the company was keen to restore travelers' confidence in sea travel by raising the level and quality of services provided to passengers on board its fleet.
He revealed that in 2025 the company carried 317,000 passengers on board its fleet, an increase of 26% compared with 2024, which recorded 251,000 passengers, thanks to the company's success in providing integrated transport services in cooperation with land transport companies in Jordan and Egypt, as well as launching promotional offers during various seasons and developing electronic booking systems.
He said that in its fortieth year the company has reached the strongest position in its history, achieving its highest financial and operational indicators since its founding in 1985, and has today become an icon of successful joint Arab action and a key pillar supporting the economies of the founding states through the movement of trade, goods, passengers and tourist groups between them and the rest of the region and the world. The unprecedented achievements, figures and historical results reflect the development, progress and prosperity the company's business has reached today.
Regarding the company's tourism activity on the Aqaba–Taba line, Al-Abadleh explained that in 2025 the company achieved an unprecedented number of tourists, carrying 130,000 tourists in both directions, compared with 85,000 in 2024, an increase of 52%, despite the geopolitical tensions the world witnessed that affected various countries.
He noted that the growth in tourism activity came as a result of several factors, including the addition of the tourist boat "Dahab" and the boat "New Aqaba" to the company's fleet in 2025, joint promotion and working through a tourism coalition, cooperation with travel and tourism offices and companies to achieve tourism links between Jordan's Golden Triangle and the South Sinai resorts, and organizing trips for tourist groups in South Sinai to visit Aqaba and the Rose City as day trips or overnight trips.
The company's plans to implement a set of investment projects contributing to the development of the maritime transport and tourism industry in the region were also reviewed. In cooperation with the Red Sea Ports Authority, the company is working to build a shipyard for building, repairing and maintaining ships at the Port of Safaga, as well as developing a maintenance and repair facility for tourist boats (a slipway) in Sharm El Sheikh, helping strengthen the infrastructure of marine services in the region. These projects combine maintenance and repair services for ships, boats and tourist yachts of all sizes and types with the creation of an integrated entertainment area to serve tourist groups.
He continued that the company is in the process of agreeing with Aqaba Development Corporation to grant Arab Bridge the right to manage, develop and operate the passenger terminal at Aqaba Port, so that the infrastructure, facilities, services, yards and berths at the passenger terminal can be developed.
Al-Abadleh explained that the company will increase its capital from realized profits to $141 million, enabling it to implement these vital and important projects.
For his part, Lt. Gen. Eng. Kamel El-Wazir, Egypt's Minister of Transport, expressed his pride in the company's distinctive and unprecedented results, stressing the major role the company plays in transporting Egyptian exports via its fleet to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and the Gulf states, and its role in carrying passengers from Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to Egypt and vice versa. He stressed that Egyptian ports are always at the service of Arab brothers, offering all facilities for transporting Jordanian and Arab exports and imports through them, linking Jordan's Aqaba Port and Egypt's Nuweiba Port with Egyptian ports on the Mediterranean and from there to countries around the world.
Lt. Gen. Eng. Kamel El-Wazir also stressed that the investment projects the company plans to implement come in light of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's directives to develop Egyptian seaports to turn Egypt into a regional hub for transport, logistics and transit trade, as well as strengthening Egypt's position as a regional center for ship and marine unit repair and maintenance and a global center for yacht tourism. He noted that the Egyptian Ministry of Transport will provide all facilities to complete these vital projects, stressing the need to set timelines for each project when implementation begins and to adhere to them, as well as continuing to strengthen the company's fleet with the latest ships while constantly working to open new markets.
In a related context, Jordan's Minister of Transport, Dr. Eng. Nidal Qatamin, stressed that Arab Bridge is a successful model of joint Arab action, with its record of achievement and development continuing without stopping, praising the efforts of the company's management in achieving historic results year after year. He stressed the importance of moving forward with developing and upgrading services at the Aqaba passenger terminal, helping support tourism and maritime trade in Aqaba, supporting its economic growth and creating new jobs. He added that in times of crisis, leaders capable of working and making a difference emerge, and this is what the company's management did by closely following the negative repercussions of the war currently raging in the region, which mainly caused fuel and energy prices to rise, taking a set of exceptional measures that helped maintain the continuity of the company's business and even achieve distinctive results.
