Cairo – Decypha: Egypt has long prioritized tourism as one of its main sources for foreign currency and gross domestic product (GDP). With the several hits the country’s tourism sector experienced in the previous years, the state began to focus more of its recovery efforts towards expanding the inflow of tourists from neighboring gulf countries, given their better understanding of the country’s current safety levels.
Similarly, in terms of investment flow from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Egyptian government has invested significant efforts towards attracting GCC investors to the industry.
To better understand the influence of the GCC region on the Egyptian tourism sector, Decypha sat down with the Head of the Egyptian Tourism Federation (ETF), Karim Mohsen for an interview.
How do you see Gulf investments in the tourism sector?
While they have seen a recent rise, GCC investments in the Egyptian tourism sector are still low. However, local tourism has also seen a decline in flow during the past few years, yet projections see the sector recovering and accelerating in terms of growth.
Ideally what should GCC investors focus on when approaching the Egyptian Market?
In Egypt there are now thousands of hotel rooms operating and others under construction, what the sector lacks is recreational services in resorts.
The availability of these leisure facilities near the resorts will boost tourist influx to Egypt not only from the Gulf countries but from all the export markets of the tourist traffic to Egypt.
This will increase the spending rates and therefore investors will breakeven within a short period, the sector in the current period does not have recreational services.
This is what the Egyptian government is working on achieving, through attracting investors specifically for these projects.
I think that Egypt has a very good atmosphere for European tourists, especially as the country offers a wide variety of touristic activities, from safaris, adventure, diving, to cultural tourism, not to mention cruises in the Nile River in Luxor and Aswan.
All this adds to the strength of the Egyptian tourist destination compared to other competing destinations in the region, simply adding entertainment projects to the mix and the country will gain more grounds in terms of competitiveness with other destinations.
In terms of figures, how do you see the tourist activity from Gulf countries?
The influx of GCC tourism has significantly grown over the past year specifically, reaching an estimated 2 million tourists from a total of 5.3 million tourists who entered Egypt in 2016, thus representing 36% of total arrivals.
The majority of the GCC tourism flow comes from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, in that order.
We received from Saudi Arabia alone more than 500,000 tourists in the past year, and hopefully, we expect this number to grow to 650,000.
I expect that the Gulf tourism to Egypt will increase by at least 20% during 2017, and with the continual increase in the efficiency of tourism services provided these numbers should rise sharply.
In terms of spending, GCC tourists have the highest spending levels per night, length of stay and rate of repeated visits. The average Gulf tourist spending per night in Egypt around $ 200 per night, and around $1,000 to $1,500 per week. This is a high spending indicator compared to other foreign tourists visiting the country, where the per capita expenditure does not exceed $ 80 per night.
I believe that these facts should be taken into account in terms of marketing operations carried out by Ministry of Tourism.
How do you see the competition between Egypt and other destinations in the region, especially Turkey?
There is no doubt that the services provided in Turkey are of higher efficiency than those provided in Egypt, starting from airports to dealing with individuals in the streets and the variety of tourist luring merchandise.
But Egyptian tourism has a strong advantage over Turkey that there are very good services within hotels that are offered to Gulf tourists at a higher quality and lower prices in comparison to that of Turkey.
What marketing efforts are being done both by the state and private sector to attract tourists?
The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism has already launched a promotional campaign for resorts in different Gulf focused television channels, which is very good, and I expect that these campaigns will increase in the next few weeks.
As for efforts by the private sector, I do not think they are really involved. The state has the resources to efficiently promote the country throughout the region.
I believe that the private sector has an ability to conduct public relations campaigns with tourism companies in the GCC.
Finally, I expect that there will be a very good flow this year in the summer months, after the end of the holy month of Ramadan in June.
By Decypha Editorial Team
