Minister of Tourism Dr. Rania Al-Mashat met with a delegation of officials from the global company easyJet to discuss ways to drive more inbound tourism to Egypt through the company. The meeting included the CEO of easyJet airline, which is considered one of the largest airlines in the world, the CEO of easyJet Holidays, the company's head of operations, and its head of commercial and strategy.
The company's officials expressed their desire to increase the volume of their business in the Egyptian market starting next winter season, which will help drive more air traffic to Egypt from tourist source markets. They noted that there is growing demand among their customers to travel to Egypt.
During the meeting, Al-Mashat reviewed the first follow-up report, launched by the ministry last month, on what has been achieved in the pillars of the structural reform program for developing the tourism sector, 10 months after its launch last November.
The meeting also touched on the importance of online booking for travel and tourism. The company's officials explained that easyJet has about 100 million customers annually, including 30 million who rely on online travel booking. They added that the company has a new feature for its customers that enables them to access online booking sites directly by clicking on photos of the place they wish to travel to on the social networking site Instagram.
They expressed their readiness to promote Egypt's various tourist destinations among the company's customers through its different platforms, and pointed out that the company covers all markets in Europe and operates flights at high frequencies of up to 3 flights a day from a single tourist destination.
For her part, Dr. Rania Al-Mashat noted that technology has come to dominate tourist bookings and the choice of tourist destinations, and that social networking sites now strongly influence tourists' travel decisions. For this reason, the ministry relies in its campaign on the use of technology and digital platforms to keep pace with the rapid changes in this field, especially the modern trends of travelers and tourists around the world in terms of age groups, different interests and what they look for in their trips.
The meeting also discussed the effective and influential role of joint promotional campaigns (Co-Marketing) in driving inbound tourism to Egypt. The minister noted that consistency with the pillars of Egypt's new promotional campaign is one of the new controls and criteria adopted by the ministry to regulate these campaigns for the 2019/2020 fiscal year, so that they are more influential and effective in promoting Egypt.
She referred to the pillars of Egypt's new promotional campaign, the most prominent of which is the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum at the end of 2020.
In this context, the company's officials affirmed that flights to Egypt are expected to increase after the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum next year, which will help attract diverse segments of tourists, especially with the opening of Sphinx Airport, which will facilitate tourists' access to the museum, give them the opportunity to head to various tourist cities, and offer a great opportunity to diversify tourism programs by combining cultural tourism with other types, including beach tourism.
Al-Mashat also reviewed the positive results of the new aviation incentive program, which the ministry launched in cooperation with the Ministry of Civil Aviation and which has been in effect since November 1, 2018, and runs until the end of April 2020.
She explained that the new program is based on a number of criteria, including giving preference to governorates whose inbound tourism rates have been affected recently, in order to drive more traffic to them, which will have the greatest impact in maximizing price competitiveness to increase inbound tourism to Egypt. She pointed out that the program has begun to bear fruit in attracting tourists from different countries and opening new markets, and confirmed that all outstanding dues related to previous aviation incentive programs have been settled. The company's officials expressed their desire to cooperate with the ministry through the new aviation incentive program.
