Egypt will be participating in the International Tourism Trade Fair (FITUR) in Madrid from January 17 to January 21 to promote its touristic market across the world, along with 165 other countries. According to FITUR's website, the fair is "a global meeting point for tourism professionals and the leading trade fair for inbound and outbound Ibero American markets." Besides Egypt, Arab countries will be attending including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Qatar, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Algeria. Spain is a vital tourism market in the world, and Egypt has long been aiming to increase its market share, along with Chinese and Arab markets. In 2017, FITUR beat the participation record with 9,893 exhibiting companies from 165 countries and regions, and 135,858 trade participants, the fair's website said. Last year, Egypt received an award for having the best partition out of 160 participating countries at the FITUR 2017, the Saudi Gazette reported at the time. Egypt hopes that participating in similar fairs would have a great impact in promoting Egyptian touristic destinations, as well as attracting other markets to lure tourists into Egypt. Egypt has been battling to revive the badly-affected tourism sector after years of political turmoil, that followed the 25 January uprising. This was exacerbated by the Russian plane crash, which killed all 224 passengers and crew on board, most of them Russian tourists. Egypt launched several campaigns to promote the Egyptian tourism sector since then. Recently, Amr al-Ezaby, director of Egypt's Tourism Office in England announced that a promotional tourism campaign for Egypt in the English market is set to launch in January 2018. It is scheduled to continue throughout the first quarter of that year. The campaign will start in public squares and the famous streets in London, he pointed out. Egypt also participated in the FIT International Tourism Fair of Latin America, at Buenos Aires, in October to promote Egyptian tourism in the Latin American market, local media outlets reported. A three-week campaign promoting Egyptian tourism in the Italian market launched earlier in May. Meanwhile in September, the country's "This is Egypt" promotional campaign has won Best Tourism Promotional Video in the Middle East at the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization (WTO) in China in September, beating 63 other contestants. Source: Egypt independent
