In 2004, International Tourism Arrivals (ITA’s) reached a country record-high of 8.1 million. Egypt aims to increase this to 16 million by 2014 from opening up new tourism destinations, introducing new tourism products and upgrading tourism facilities and services.
This new initiative is being led by the Egyptian Minister for Tourism, H.E. Mr. Ahmed El-Maghraby, who is attending World Travel Market to meet industry professionals and update the world travel industry on new and future tourism developments in Egypt.
H.E. Mr. Ahmed El-Maghraby said, “Our aim is to build on Egypt’s visitor numbers in 2004 and position Egypt as a leading tourism destination. Currently, Egypt attracts millions of tourists each year, predominantly from Europe and the Middle East and we aim to broaden our appeal worldwide. Communicating our developments to the travel trade and press at World Travel Market is especially important given the increasing number of valued British tourists. 665,866 British holiday makers visited Egypt between January and October 2005 (inclusive), which is a 55.2% increase compared to the same period in 2004.â€Â
Egypt’s Mediterranean Coast is a new destination that will be opened up and promoted to international visitors and as a result the Al Alamein Airport was opened on March 21, 2005 to facilitate tourism in this region.
Egypt is also building on new activity based tourism including yachting, wellness and golfing tourism. Egypt is now host to the World’s 11th best golf course and has 16 new 18 hole top quality golf courses to offer visitors.
In pursuit of meeting visitor satisfaction, Egypt is upgrading tourism facilities and services. All Egyptian airports have just completed an extensive upgrade programme. Cairo Airport is now notably under the management of the Frankfurt Aviation Authority (FAA), and Alexandria, Sharm El Sheikh, Hurghada, Luxor and Aswan are all being managed by Aeroport de Paris (ADP).
The upgraded facilities will be complimented with a concurrent upgrade in the quality of service through new training initiatives. A new National Tourism Awareness Campaign is being implemented to increase awareness in the domestic market about what tourism means to Egypt.
To meet the forecast increase in tourist arrivals, a construction plan is in progress to increase the existing 160,000 rooms by an additional 10,000 to 12,000 per year.
Egypt is also on a drive to attract shoppers from around the world with competitive pricing of international brands following the recent reform of customs and taxes. To this end Egypt is justly proud of its new flagship shopping centre City Stars – notably one of the biggest shopping centres in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
Early in the New Year, Egypt will step up its marketing drive with the help of recently appointed international industry leaders DDB (Advertising), Fleishman-Hillard (PR) and OMD (Media Planning & Buying) who are preparing new worldwide marketing, advertising and PR activities. |