By Akram Medhat
On the sidelines of ITB Berlin, Ahmed Youssef, head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, met with representatives of tourism companies and major tour operators from around the world to discuss increasing tourist traffic from Central and Eastern European markets to Egyptian tourist cities, increasing flights to some destinations, and marketing the Egyptian tourism product in the catalogs of emerging companies in the German market.
In this context, the authority's head held a meeting with Polish tour operator ITAKA, the most important tour operator for Egypt, and discussed how to drive tourist traffic from the Polish market to Taba, to which it currently operates one weekly flight.
Tour operator Corendon, which operates in the Dutch and Belgian markets, also promised, during its meeting with the head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, to increase tourist flights from the Dutch and Belgian markets to Luxor.
Meanwhile, Youssef discussed with the chairman of Thomas Cook for Central and Eastern Europe the mechanism for driving inbound tourist traffic to Egypt from this region, and they agreed to implement many activities, most importantly training sales representatives to sell the Egyptian tourism product.
The authority's head held a meeting with Expedia officials to discuss ways of cooperating to implement an online marketing campaign for Egyptian tourist destinations.
In his meeting with ASR, the association of emerging travel companies in the German market, they discussed these companies including Egypt in their tour catalogs.
The meetings agenda also included representatives of TUIfly, one of the most important charter airlines in Germany, which represents the largest tour operator in the German market, and French tour operator Fram, which has resumed operating tourist flights from the French market to Egypt after a halt of more than five years.
