Mourhaf Nazha cut a lonely figure at his family’s hotel business during the civil war. Few customers were staying at their Golden Mazzeh hotel in west Damascus as renovation was under way to open another, the landmark Royal Semiramis in the centre of the city.
“We had the odd business customer from Aleppo or Homs, but that was it,” says Mr Nazha, who presides over the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Tourism.
Samiramis, near the Ottoman-era Hejaz railway station, opened several months after the downfall of the regime of Bashar Al Assad in…
