Dubai: The Egyptian Tourist Authority (ETA) announced the launch of its $5 million (Dh18.3 million) promotional campaign entitled "Egypt: The Beginning of the Tale" yesterday during a press conference in Dubai in an effort to attract more Arab tourists.
In 2009 because of the global economic downturn, the number of visitors to Egypt went down by 2.4 per cent, said Amr El Ezabi, Chairman of ETA.
"We went from 12.8 million visitors in 2008 to 12.5 million in 2009," Al Ezabi said. However, the tourism sector has picked up again, he said.
This year Egypt's Alexandria was voted the capital of Arab tourism by the Arab Ministerial Council of Tourism — an initiative by the Arab League to support inter-Arab tourism.
Al Ezabi said that the target of the campaign is to boost tourism from the Arab world by 15 per cent. The main target countries are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Libya, Syria and Lebanon.
The campaign includes extensive television and print advertising, in addition to the revamping of ETA's official Arabic website.
The ETA's strategy is to focus on the diversity of the country and attract more tourists to the Red Sea area, Alexandria and Cairo. Through the TV promotion we tried to capture the spirit of Egypt, Al Ezabi said.
Samy Mahmoud, Undersecretary and head of the International Tourism Sector at ETA, told Gulf News that 64 per cent of tourists come from Europe and only 16 per cent from the Arab world.
Chartered flights
Mahmoud said that this discrepancy between tourists from the Arab world and Europe is due to the fact that there are a lot of chartered flights that carry passengers from Europe to the Middle East.
"In the Arab world we don't have that many chartered flights," he said.
"Libya is the number one country from which we get the most number of visitors in the Arab world. Saudia Arabia comes in second," Mahmoud said.
According to the ETA, 50,000 Emiratis visited the country in 2009. Al Ezabi said he hopes the new campaign will increase tourism from the UAE by 10 per cent.
Nationals from the six GCC countries and Syria do not need to apply for a visa in advance; they'll receive a visa upon arrival, Mahmoud said. They've been given this privilege so we can increase tourism from those countries, he said.
