VoA for Indian groups
Tunisia is the latest entrant among the countries that want to grab a bite of the Indian tourism pie, and is offering visa-on-arrival for Indian groups of minimum 20 people.
The Embassy of Tunisia in India, along with BTC Travel Group presented the various attractions of the destination in front of the leading members of the travel trade. Tarek Azouz, Ambassador, Tunisia to India, said, “We think there is big potential in India market and we believe that Tunisia, with its proximity to Europe can be easily included in European itineraries.”
Tushar Jain, Group Managing Director, BTC Travel Group, said, “Our focus is to tell Indian travel agents that they can come to Tunisia, and for that we are looking for couple of more events in Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore. We are helping the embassy to market Tunisia in India and we will be organising some small educational trips and some presentations.”
Azouz added, “We participate in fairs as well. We had one team in Mumbai last September and we did tours and promotions. We are also trying to work with Bollywood. Last year 6.5 million tourists visited Tunisia, which includes Chinese in big numbers as well as Europeans and North Americans. Indians are only starting to explore the destination and the numbers are only in a few thousands.” In fact, Tunisia is very well connected via Gulf countries, Europe, as well as Istanbul. “We are focusing on every type of traveller, be it FITs or groups. Another advantage is that Tunisia is very cost ef- fective. The hotels range from three to five star and are not very expensive.”
Jain added, “Tunisia is the perfect destination for MICE groups and the Embassy of Tunisia has introduced visa on arrival facility for Indian groups. If a travel agent has a group of 20 people, they can send prior information to the embassy and they can get visa at the immigration counter. All one needs to produce is the hotel voucher at the time of immigration.”