Rehab Saad speaks to the new head of the Egyptian Tourist Authority about his future plans for promoting Egypt abroad Maintaining the success that has been attained in Egypt's traditional tourist markets, while attempting to attain similar gains in other markets, are among the top priorities of Ahmed El-Khadem, the recently appointed head of the Egyptian Tourism Authority (ETA). "We will try to increase our market share from traditional markets, and simultaneously try to penetrate new emerging markets," El-Khadem -- who was previously the general manager of the Egyptian Federation of Tourism Chambers -- told Al-Ahram Weekly. Another priority involves reassessing the financial resources of promotional campaigns abroad. El-Khadem said Egypt has been spending a lot of money to promote Egypt abroad, either via direct media campaigns or through ETA's 17 offices around the world. "We would like to get the maximum benefit from the funds spent. This would come through the evaluation of our media campaigns, as well as the performance of our offices abroad," he said. "This evaluation has to be a continuous process, not just once, because markets are very dynamic, and are always changing: economies change; demographics change, as sometimes we have more elderly people travelling from one market, and sometimes younger visitors; trends change, as do preferences. We want to evaluate things constantly to be able to decide on the best marketing tool for each market." The budget allocated for promoting Egypt abroad is $50 million a year. According to El-Khadem, 90 per cent of the budget is allocated for direct media campaigns, including press, TV, billboards, and movie and public transport ads. The rest goes to the global network of tourist offices. The significant size of the tourism promotion budget reflects the industry's importance to the economy. Tourism is the number two hard currency earner, following Suez Canal revenues, and preceding petroleum and the remittances from Egyptian workers abroad. In 2003, Egypt's tourism revenues reached $4.4 billion. According to tourist officials, that was expected to rise to $5 billion by the end of 2004. This year, from January to July, Egypt received 4.5 million tourists, a 57.1 per cent increase over the 2.8 million who visited over the same period last year. Tourist nights increased from 19,829,933 for January to July 2003 to 41,805,404 for the same period in 2004 -- a 110.8 per cent rise. ETA will mainly be focusing its promotional activities on Europe, which is considered the sector's main market, as it provides about 65 per cent of the tourists coming to Egypt. "We have to consider the changes that took place in Europe, as there are ten countries that have recently joined the EU, and they are mainly from the Eastern bloc. We are looking closely at these markets, as their economy is improving, and thus have major potential," El-Khadem said. Although the Arab market constitutes the second major region sending tourists to Egypt (about 16 per cent of the total number of travellers), El-Khadem believes changes are needed in the strategy used to target that market. Before 1993, under former tourism minister Fouad Sultan, Egypt had two tourism offices in the Gulf area: one in Kuwait; and the other in the United Arab Emirates. The offices were supposed to promote Egypt in the region with a goal towards increasing its share of that booming market. When former minister Mamdouh El-Beltagui took over in 1993, however, he decided to shut down these offices, compensating for their absence by organising road shows to different Gulf countries. The minister himself -- accompanied by representatives from the private sector -- always headed the road shows, which were said to be successful in attracting Arab travellers to Egypt. Over the last few years, new procedures concerning visas, accommodations and property ownership were also adopted to further encourage Arab travellers. According to El-Khadem, however, "we don't have enough business partners in the Arab world -- meaning tour operators and airlines -- as we do in Europe. If we want to attain any success in this part of the world, we have to strengthen our relations with business partners. We could have a team of ETA promoters constantly travelling to and from the eight main Arab countries exporting tourism to Egypt. If we send eight of our staff members, who are professionally trained in promoting Egypt, to these countries four times a year, it will cost less than running an office, and will be more effective." El-Khadem also sees a barrier in the taxes levied on parties and wedding ceremonies held by Arab travellers in Egypt. These fees have meant that the once legendary parties and weddings held by Arabs in Cairo, Sharm El-Sheikh and the Red Sea have been forfeited to Lebanon and Dubai. "We are asking the ministries concerned to reconsider these taxes, which we consider deterrents and tourism-inhibiting factors. I believe that there is now some sort of understanding; however, you have to remember that the government needs certain legislative amendments in order to abolish these taxes, and this will take some time," El-Khadem said. 877,522 Arab travellers came to Egypt between January and July 2004, compared to 664,195 over the same period in 2003 -- an increase of 32.1 per cent. Those travellers spent 8,759,235 tourist nights compared to 4,756,900 in 2003. El-Khadem said campaigns are specifically tailored to the markets being targeted. There are campaigns directed at the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary and Romania. There are also campaigns targeting the US and Canada. Asian nations like Japan, China, and Korea also get their share of promotion, as does Australia and Arab countries including the Gulf area, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. "The focus of each campaign varies. The campaigns directed at North America, Japan and Australia, for instance, are cultural, while campaigns directed at Europe will focus on sea, sun and sand; the focus of a campaign directed at the Arab world would be socio-cultural and heavy on entertainment, theme parks and shopping," he said. Although domestic tourism constitutes 12 per cent of Egypt's total tourist movement, the market is dealing with problems like the high hotel rates being paid by Egyptian travellers in comparison to their foreign counterparts. The recent rise in ticket prices on domestic flights have also made air travel unaffordable for many Egyptians; the suspension of domestic routes like Cairo-Taba and Cairo-Marsa Allam have also made these areas more inaccessible. "The real problem with domestic tourism is that there is a notion, which was highlighted by the media, that unless you travel by plane and stay in five star hotels, there's no domestic tourism, and this is very untrue. You can travel anywhere in Egypt in a few hours by car, and thus the plane is not really necessary. Moreover, we have hotels of all categories all over Egypt, including four, three and two star hotels. Many of them are very good, and up to international standards. People, however, want to stay in five star hotels and pay two star hotel rates. We should change our travel patterns and choose hotels that suit our budgets," El- Khadem said. He also suggested that, "Egyptians change the timing of their travels, meaning that they should enjoy travelling throughout the year, and not only on holidays." Although El-Khadem admitted that many domestic travellers don't have that luxury, since their schedules depend on their children's school holidays, "there are parents who have grown up children in universities, or who have finished their education," who still won't reconsider the way they travel. El-Khadem urged Egyptians holiday- makers to start travelling in groups rather than individually because this was the only way to benefit from discounted group rates on accommodation and transportation. "This is already happening, but it needs to be encouraged further. Different organisations like companies, clubs and professional associations" were doing most of the group travelling, he said. Although one third of the world's monuments are located in Egypt, travellers looking for beaches are overtaking the number of travellers seeking out cultural tourism. A quick look at how overbooked the hotels and resorts of the Red Sea and Sinai are almost all year round, compared to those in Luxor and Aswan, makes that abundantly clear. Moreover, tourism officials have recently leaned towards promoting Egypt as a holiday destination, rather than a country with major archaeological sites. El-Khadem argues that this does not apply to Egypt alone. "According to a report published by the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), 88 per cent of world tourism is directed towards holiday and resort tourism, and only 12 per cent is cultural. In fact there was a drop in the number of cultural tourists worldwide -- from 16 per cent in 1995 to 12 per cent in 2004." El-Khadem said people today are so stressed that what they really need is a relaxing holiday, rather than a trip where they wake up in the early morning and climb up and down monument sites and the like. "Moreover, if you are looking to tourism to be a major part of your economy, you cannot attain that through cultural tourism. Most monuments have a certain capacity and sometimes suffer from excess crowds." Officials also believe that the booming Nile cruise business between Luxor and Aswan is one of the main reasons for the drop in number of tourists at those cities' hotels. The cruises tend to be cheaper than the hotels; with travellers able to spend almost a week on the Nile, including accommodation on a full board basis, visits to most of the ancient sites on the river's banks, and the services of a professional tour guide, for far less than it would cost to stay in an ordinary hotel. "This situation might change if the normal hotels start to bring their rates into line with those of Nile cruises. Moreover, now that the tourism ministry has stopped issuing licenses to additional Nile cruise boats, I think normal hotels stand to greatly benefit."
