Sameh Abdel Moneim from Poland: Polish tour operators confirmed that Egypt will see a strong summer season
Travel Yalla News: 145,000 Polish tourists visited Egypt by the end of October 2017
By Akram Medhat
Sameh Abdel Moneim, regional director of sales and marketing for Three Corners hotels in Egypt, said that the TTW international tourism fair in the Polish capital, Warsaw, saw strong participation by Red Sea hotels, with Marsa Alam hotels having the strongest presence because they are currently the first choice of Polish tourists, followed by Hurghada hotels in second place in terms of presence, while Sharm El-Sheikh hotels had weak participation.
In an exclusive statement from Poland to Travel Yalla News on the sidelines of the Warsaw fair, held from November 23 to 25, Abdel Moneim revealed that Egypt will see a strong tourism season during the summer months, as confirmed by most of the major Polish tour operators, adding that Marsa Alam still holds the lead in bookings, as it did last summer season, and that there is a 20% increase in bookings for Hurghada next summer.
In a related context, Abdel Moneim praised the major efforts made by the head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, the Egyptian tourism counselor in Germany, who oversees the Polish market, and Air Cairo to restore Egypt's tourism share of this important and promising market.
The regional director of sales and marketing for Three Corners hotels noted that turnout at the Egyptian pavilion was not strong, explaining that this is natural for a market that relies on three or four major companies operating as a monopoly, but which are able to bring large numbers of Polish tourists to Egypt; therefore, the current turnout cannot be linked to the expected market share.
He explained that the tour operators holding a large share of Polish tourism to Egypt still retain their strength, and no new company capable of competing with them has emerged. This is due to these companies' experience as well as their ownership of airlines, factors that make it difficult for any start-up to compete with them. Some major Polish companies have even begun expanding into other countries because they have reached the maximum of the Polish market, such as Itaka, which bought a company in the Czech Republic and another in Slovakia in order to expand in the Eastern European market.
Polish Tourism in Egypt
According to tourism statistics obtained exclusively by Travel Yalla News, Polish tourism to Egypt recorded 145,000 tourist arrivals between January and October 2017, up 166% from the same period of 2016, approaching the levels of 2015, before the crisis, when Egypt received 194,000 Polish tourists.
Tourist nights spent by Poles in Egypt reached 1.2 million in the first ten months of this year, a surge of 338% over 2016, and this notable growth in arrival and stay rates is prevailing across the major European tourism markets.
Poland ranked sixth among the top ten source markets for tourism to Egypt in the peak year of 2010, with 594,000 Polish tourists, representing 6% of total tourist arrivals in Egypt, who spent about 4.5 million tourist nights.
Read also:
Egypt Received 826,000 Tourists in October, Up 63%, Making It the Best Month of 2017
Egypt's Tourism Revenue Reaches $717 Million in October, Up 182%
