Egypt targets Arab tourists
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The Egyptian Tourist Authority (ETA) announced the launch of its $5 million (Dh18.3 million) promotional campaign entitled “Egypt: The Beginning of the Tale” yesterday during a press conference in Dubai in an effort to attract more Arab tourists.
This year Egypt’s Alexandria was voted the capital of Arab tourism by the Arab Ministerial Council of Tourism — an initiative by the Arab League to support inter-Arab tourism.
The goal of the campaign is to boost tourism from the Arab world by 15 per cent. The main target countries are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Libya, Syria and Lebanon.
The campaign includes extensive television and print advertising, in addition to the revamping of ETA’s official Arabic website.
The ETA’s strategy is to focus on the diversity of the country and attract more tourists to the Red Sea area, Alexandria and Cairo.
Samy Mahmoud, Undersecretary and head of the International Tourism Sector at ETA, told Gulf News that 64 per cent of tourists come from Europe and only 16 per cent from the Arab world.
Mahmoud said that this discrepancy between tourists from the Arab world and Europe is due to the fact that there are a lot of chartered flights that carry passengers from Europe to the Middle East.
Nationals from the six GCC countries and Syria do not need to apply for a visa in advance; they’ll receive a visa upon arrival, Mahmoud said.
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