I remember how Damascus International Airport was a few years ago. Yes, the displays were in Arabic and English, yet most announcements were in Arabic only. It occasionally happened that foreigners asked me about their flight's status and the meaning of some announcements.
In 2010, a quality programme was introduced and you could see that people started getting trained on customer service. That means... not all of them, but at least some. Cleanliness was increased and more and more staff apart from the check-in people were able to speak English, including the shop agents. Nowadays most announcements are bilingual and understandable. However, the immigration officers normally don't speak sufficient English to handle incoming non-Arabic speaking tourists. Unfortunately, this has not changed yet.
So let me ask that inevitable question: how can an airport claim to be 'international' if key staff don't speak English? It makes a tourist's life quite difficult at times. One can only hope that with the increasing influx of travellers, this will change to the better.
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