Under the title "Around The World", the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority organized a tourism roadshow in the cities of Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest in Romania and the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, to promote the Egyptian tourist destination, in cooperation with Aviareps, the largest provider of professional services in Eastern European countries.
The roadshow was organized as part of implementing the ministry's promotional strategy to diversify tourism markets and open new markets, including Eastern European countries, and to shed light on the diversity of the Egyptian destination's products and its various tourism patterns in order to attract more inbound tourist traffic from these markets.
For his part, Eng. Ahmed Youssef, Assistant Minister of Tourism and Antiquities for Strategic Departments and Acting CEO of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, said the Romanian and Bulgarian markets are among the promising tourism markets for the Egyptian destination, noting that this year has seen notable growth in tourism demand from the two countries, along with an increase in charter flights heading to Egyptian coastal destinations, which has had a positive impact on tourist traffic and contributed to a notable increase in the number of tourists arriving from them compared with last year.
He added that organizing this roadshow in these two markets comes as part of the policy of moving into non-traditional foreign markets, which helps drive more inbound tourist traffic to Egypt.
The Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority was represented on the roadshow by Ahmed Salheen, Director of the authority's Eastern European Markets Unit, and Hady Maher, a member of the authority's Eastern European Markets Unit.
During the roadshow events, Ahmed Salheen gave a presentation reviewing the most prominent tourism patterns and products of the Egyptian destination that attract the interest of Romanian and Bulgarian tourists. He also spoke about the most important developments and updates in Egypt's tourism sector, as well as new openings, most notably the upcoming opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, scheduled for November 1.
He also touched on the efforts being made by the Egyptian state to develop infrastructure and implement major tourism-related projects, including New Alamein City, which is a year-round tourist destination and would help increase the number of tourists to Egypt.
Several professional meetings were also held with a number of tour operators and representatives of tourism and airline companies in the Romanian and Bulgarian markets, which expressed interest in starting a number of promotional activities in cooperation with the authority to promote the Egyptian destination in Romania and Bulgaria.
The Romanian and Bulgarian markets have flights operating from them to the Egyptian destination, as a number of tour operators working in these two markets operate charter flights from 6 Romanian cities, namely Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Suceava, Oradea and Iași, to Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada, as well as from Bucharest to New Alamein City, at a rate of two flights per week. Charter flights are also operated from the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, to Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada.
