THIS has been a record year for Austria in terms of visitors from the Middle East with arrivals and overnights from the region increasing 26.1 per cent.
According to Klaus Ehrenbrandtner, director Middle East of the Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO): “In numbers we have had 104,000 arrivals generating 366,000 overnights in the first nine months alone.This is more than we had in the whole year 2009 and also more than we had in the whole year 2008!”
This is in addition to the tremendous response the country has seen in the last five years (2004-2009), recording a 125 per cent increase in arrivals and 100 per cent increase in overnights from the GCC market. Ehrenbrandtner is confident that 2010 will close with stronger figures.
He said: “Out of the Middle East, GCC countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait continue to top the list. However, the guests from the Middle East are still a very small proportion of the international mix of guests that travel to Austria every year.
“Although this fact is still not known to everybody in the travel industry in the Middle East, Austria has been in the top 10 list of countries with the highest international arrivals and tourism receipts worldwide in the last years, having about three times as many guests as Switzerland – being an equally big country – and only about 10 per cent fewer than Germany, a country with 10 times as many inhabitants.”
In 2009, Austria welcomed 32 million visitors generateing 124 million overnights.
The country has traditionally been a leisure destination for guests from the Middle East and the trend has remaind. The Arab traveller enjoys historic cities such as Vienna and Salzburg and the beautiful nature in the Alps in places like Zell am See, Kitzbuehel, the Gastein Valley or Seefeld. However, Ehrenbrandtner is quick to point out that Arab guests are willing to discover new cities.
“We have experienced this especially in the destinations in western Austria that have not been so well known in the market before: Innsbruck, Kitzbuehel and Seefeld in Tirol have been the destinations with the biggest increase of guests this year. Carinthia, the land of the lakes, is also becoming more and more popular, especially Lake Woerth which boasts many luxury hotels directly at the lake side and has a very lively atmosphere.”
In 2011, the ANTO plans to introduce a free-to-use smartphone application for the Arabic traveller, called the Nemsa iConcierge.
“Nemsa is Arabic for ‘Austria’, hence the application will be an electronic concierge for Arabic travellers in Austria. Dedicated to the Arab traveller, it will feature a travel guide with Arabic-speaking guides, hotels with Arabic-speaking staff, restaurants with halal or Arabic food and much more. There will also be a little phrase book with the most important phrases in German,” added Ehrenbrandtner.
ANTO will also continue to work with agents through its Austrian Certified Travel Specialist (ACTS) programme, which has grown to 750 members in 2010.