IDDLE Eastern destination management company Alpha Tours has launched an outbound division, Alpha Holidays.
From this summer, the company will provide GCC residents with global access to wide-ranging options from its offices in Dubai and Doha and through its network of agents all over the region.
It will offer hotels, apartments, villas, chateaus, car rentals, yacht hires, city breaks, special interest tours, and spa and wellness packages to the local travel trade at competitive prices to key holiday locations worldwide. These services have been contracted keeping in view the taste of residents of the region and can be sold by agents to their clients without the hassle and cost that comes along in trying to do it on there own.
In creating a profile of services, important suppliers have been sourced who are either familiar with the dynamics of business in this region, or have been eager to service its business and hence made efforts to condition their processing sections to meet with the precise needs. Many of them will talk about their association with Alpha Holidays to agents at the ATM.
So whether the client needs a room at a reasonably priced hotel in London, a yacht in the Mediterranean, Alpha Holidays has the answers.
TOURIST arrivals in Lebanon have grown 33 per cent in the first quarter of 2004, reaching a total of 202,422 visitors, according to the Tourism Ministry. During the same period in 2003, only 151,844 visitors travelled to the country.
Forty per cent of this year's numbers were Arab, 27 per cent European, 16 per cent Asian and 10 per cent American.
The ministry also reported a total of 71,956 tourists in March, a 77 per cent jump over the previous year and 18 per cent up from the previous month. The rise in numbers is partially attributed to the war in Iraq last spring, which negatively affected Lebanon's tourism sector. Nevertheless, the post-war growth meant the country managed to record a six per cent increase in tourist arrivals for 2003, exceededing the 1 million mark for the first time in over 30 years.
Meanwhile, passenger traffic at the Beirut International Airport jumped more than 20 percent in the first quarter of 2004. A total of 665,449 passengers used the airport in the first three months of the year. Of those, 305,755 were arrivals, an increase of 21 percent, putting the country on track to receive well over a million visitors this year.