Egypt back on tourism map
After a long silence from its tourism authority in India, Egypt has restarted dialogue with the travel trade. The NTO has designed an extensive blueprint for the market.
Good news came along with the successful culmination of Egypt’s Economic Development Conference on March 15, 2015 held in Sharm El Sheikh. The destination received commitments of investment and long-term loans of more than USD 100 billion from all over the world.
Giving more information on this, Ismail A. Hamid, Egyptian Tourism Counsellor and Regional Director (India & Far East), General Consulate of A.R.E. says, “A delegation of 45 delegates from India was also present. With this initiative, Egypt will be back on the tourism map. We are already seeing good response from India with a 24 per cent increase in January-February 2015 as compared to the same period last year,” he said. His target for India now is reaching one million tourists by 2017. Egypt has also re-initiated a lot of activities for the travel trade. “We are doing a roadshow in April end-May beginning in four cities. We have finalized New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru so far. The fourth will either be Kolkata or Hyderabad. For Chennai, which is a huge pilgrim market for us, we will be making a separate campaign dedicated to the Christians,” Hamid reveals.
The NTO participated in OTM this February as well as SATTE. Since the new financial year starts from July, Hamid said that they would have more concrete and detailed plans then. “I will be planning for the entire year and plans for the next fiscal year will be more concrete. By then, I would have also understood the Indian market well,” he says.
The priority for Egypt now is to change the image of Egypt as a country of the pyramids and the sphinx. “While Egypt has the pyramids, it also has other prod- ucts like beautiful sea, top diving destinations in Sharm-el-Shaikh, beautiful landscape in Alexandria, MICE facilities, shopping, food, culture, etc that not many travellers know. I want to bring this aspect of Egypt in the forefront,” Hamid states.
Another important agenda for Hamid is to make the destination packages cheaper to attract the middle class from India as well. “Since the cost of travel to Egypt is high, it attracts mostly high-end tourists by default. My aim is to reduce the trip budget and we are doing this by introducing more products on the Red Sea. The hotels are cheaper here so I want the agents to suggest their clients to look at Red Sea as their base and make day trips from there to other places like Luxor or Aswan to bring down the cost while enjoying water sports on the Red Sea,” Hamid reveals.
The Tourism Counsellor is also looking to facilitate chartered fights and more air connectivity from India. Hamid says, “If we manage to get an LCC flying between India and Sharm El Shaikh or Hurghada, the ticket costs will drop sharply. We have been talking with some Indian LCC carriers but any development will take some time.”