By Akram Medhat
Hesham El-Demery, head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, said that in light of the state's general policy of rationalizing spending on representation abroad, the tourism representation system at the overseas offices has been reviewed, reducing their number by freezing some of them.
El-Demery stressed that the authority's priority is to achieve optimal coverage of the targeted tourism markets, which number more than 80, and to work with the highest possible efficiency in those markets.
He added that, as part of the spending rationalization policies, the authority will move as many offices as possible into Egyptian embassy buildings, after studying the contractual terms of the current offices to ensure that the remaining lease periods are settled with the owners without the authority incurring any penalties.
El-Demery pointed out that the new system aims to create and train a second and third tier of young cadres at the authority to take responsibility for following up on and supervising those offices, whether centrally from Cairo or abroad, in addition to expanding the use of modern technology and means of communication in its work so that it can keep pace with international methods and cover the largest number of promising markets more effectively.
The head of the authority explained that the offices' areas of supervision are currently being redistributed to make their performance more effective.
In a related context, El-Demery said that criteria for evaluating the performance of overseas office directors have been finalized, based on scientific foundations and measurable standards approved by the authority's board of directors, as the sector will set the desired targets, which will be reviewed in the middle and at the end of the year to ensure they are achieved.
It is worth noting that the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority currently has 8 overseas offices, in Germany, Italy, Russia, the Czech Republic, Britain, France, China and India, and the authority recently decided to freeze the activity of a number of them, namely the United States, Belgium and the UAE.
