AS THIS year’s partner country for ITB Asia, Egypt used the opportunity to showcase the country’s tourism offerings with the aim of increasing visitors from the vastly expanding Asian market.
The country held a workshop for travel agents prior to the event and also conducted an exotic Egypt Night extravaganza on the opening day of the show all of which helped drive visitors to the stand.
“Our activities in and around ITB Asia were excellent, I think there is no doubt that we are definitely in ‘the Asian Century’,” said Hisham Zaazou, First Assistant Minister in Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism.
He said that in 2009 12.5 million tourists visited Egypt with this figure expected to increase significantly this year to around 15 million but of those only around 700,000 came from Asia.
Though the figures are increasingly drastically, particularly from South Korea which was up 64 per cent, Singapore, which increased 34 per cent, and the rest of Asia also showing double-digit growth, Zaazou is confident visitor figures from Asia can be vastly improved and is planning various promotional activities in the coming months.
He said: “700,000 is not a large figure when you consider the size and number of travellers coming out of Asia. German and UK tourists each are around one million each year so I feel Asia has massive growth potential.
“The numbers certainly are increasing and there are various reasons for that, partly because people from this part of the world have traditionally travelled within Asia and to Europe and they are now looking further afield to more exotic destinations, such as Egypt, and also because we are actively promoting Egypt as a destination to Asian travellers.”
He said one of the major developments at ITB Asia was the interest in Egypt’s Mice offerings, which he felt had previously been a relatively unknown quantity to Asian travel buyers.
“When people think of Egypt they naturally think of cultural tourism which is no surprise since we have so much amazing history for people to enjoy,” said Zaazou. “However, what people were less aware of is that Egypt also has great Mice destinations which can be combined with cultural, leisure and sports tourism, such as golfing, or even adventure travel, such as desert safaris in our eastern and western deserts, which each offer completely different experiences, or Nile cruises.”
To increase Asian awareness of Egypt the tourism authority is inviting media and travel agent visits, participating in Asia functions and planning further workshops. The country’s Asia office is run out of Mumbai and usually conducts one trip per year to Southeast Asia but this has been upped to three or four to take advantage of the burgeoning interest in the destination and Zaazou concluded: “We want to build on the success of this year with increased space (at ITB Asia) next year. I will report to the industry in Egypt to ensure even greater participation in 2011.”