Europeans in white bath robes saunter across the marble lobby of a luxury hotel on the Tunisian island of Djerba, heading for a spot of relaxation at the spa or a few hours’ soaking up the sun on the resort’s pristine beaches.

At breakfast, the waiters in the restaurant can barely keep up. All around French, German, English and Arabic spoken by Libyans escaping uncertainty in their own country, can be heard amid the chatter.

After a year of revolutionary turmoil that saw tourists flee the Mediterranean hotspot in droves, Tunisia hopes 2012 will mark the start of the recovery in a sector that used to account for almost seven per cent of gross domestic product and employs 500,000 people, second only to the farming sector.

“I heard a lot about the turmoil in the security situation but the reality is completely different because it is safe,” said Monica, a French tourist who has visited Tunisia many times before. She did not wish to give her name.

“We stay out late every night and nothing scares us. I’m here with my friend this time but in the summer I will come back with the family and I will tell everyone that Tunisia has not changed. It is even more charming than before.”

In 2011 fewer than five million people visited the country that witnessed the start of the Arab Spring, when a revolution ousted veteran dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, sparking a wave of uprisings across the region.

Visitor numbers were down from seven million in 2010 while tourism income, Tunisia’s top source of foreign currency, fell by a third in 2011, or one billion Tunisian dinars (€500 million). Twenty-five hotels closed, costing 3,500 jobs.

This year, the sector hopes to recover half its losses, attracting six million visitors and raking in €250 million more than last year for its depleted coffers.

While the North African country has made a relatively smooth transition to democracy, last year’s war in neighbouring Libya pushed tens of thousands of refugees across the border, raising fears the conflict would spill over and delay economic recovery.

Occasional protests and lingering fears that Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that won the first post-uprising elections in October, would seek to Islamise society, have also held back tourists, as has the economic crisis in Europe.

The five-star Radisson Blu in Djerba, which attracted 1.2 million visitors before the uprising, boasted occupancy in excess of 75 per cent in 2010, a record year.

This year, Sami Ounalli, sales and marketing manager of Djerba’s Park Inn and Radisson Blu, hopes it can regain 90 per cent of lost business.

“We expected tourism to return in April/May 2011. It was possible but when tourists travel they think of security, and the Libyan revolution and the refugee camps slowed recovery,” he said.

The new government, caught up in political wrangling over the role of Islam in the Constitution, had also been slow to reassure visitors, he said.

“In the first four months of 2012, we see tourism in Djerba up 200 per cent on 2011, but that was a low base. We are 20 per cent from achieving 2010 levels ... In 2013, we hope to equal or exceed 2010 levels, as Djerba has a lot to offer.”

Tunisia’s economy is relatively small – gross domestic product is about the same size as that of the Dominican Republic. But it could be a bellwether for how bigger non-oil-based economies will fare in recovering from the Arab Spring, particularly Egypt. Tourism arrivals jumped 53 per cent in the first quarter from the same period last year.

That compares with a 28 per cent decline in January arrivals to Egypt, where presidential elections will take place next month, more than a year after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

With Islamists winning more than two-thirds of seats in Egypt’s new Parliament, and one conservative suggesting the pyramids be covered up, tour agents await calm and clarity.

By contrast, Tunisia’s new Islamist-led government has been at pains to assure visitors the country is open for business after the turmoil saw the economy shrink 1.8 per cent and unemployment soar from 13 to 18 per cent last year. Even for visitors from Libya, who made up a major chunk of tourists in Tunisia in the first quarter, their laid-back neighbour offers a respite not only from instability but from a country where alcohol is banned and leisure facilities scarce.

“They say there are no tourists but the hotels are busy,” said one Tunisian woman on her way to a job interview at a Djerba spa.

“They are hiring for the season, even if you lack experience.”

But while the pick-up in tourism is an encouraging sign, the outlook is uncertain.

Visitors from the eurozone, who before the revolution formed the bulk of tourists in Tunisia, have seen their spending power strained by the region’s debt crisis.

A revival in tourism moreover will only help the coastal resorts, already the more prosperous areas of the country. It will do little for the central towns where there is little industry and unemployment is high and where riots still break out regularly.

To boost tourism’s economic role the government acknowledges it must diversify from beach tourism that draws the budget-conscious and attract long-haul visitors from Asia and America.

It is also seeking to entice cultural tourists to its Roman amphitheatre at El Jem, to the meandering old quarter and the mosaic museum at Bardo in Tunis, and aims to develop tourism in its central desert, whose subterranean dwellings and bleak landscapes featured in the Star Wars films.

Such initiatives could help spread tourist revenues to the poorer central regions which were first to rise up in protest against unemployment and political repression in a country that until last year was a police state.