By Akram Medhat
German company FTI organized a conference and exhibition from November 27 to December 3, featuring events that included workshops and tours of a number of Egyptian tourist cities, inviting 266 small German travel agencies that sell tour packages to the Egyptian destination through tour operator FTI, with the aim of boosting German tourism to Egypt by presenting the products more clearly to these agencies.
Sameh Abdel Moneim, regional director of sales and marketing for "3 Corners" hotels in Egypt and one of the participants, said the exhibition and workshops saw the participation of many hotels in various tourist cities. He added that the German travel agencies' visit program included dividing them into groups to visit Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada, Marsa Alam, El Gouna, Luxor and Aswan, and organizing a Nile trip on a "Nile cruise."
Abdel Moneim revealed to "Travel Yalla News" that the German travel agencies confirmed a 60% rise in next summer's bookings from the German market to the Egyptian destination.
Abdel Moneim praised the 15-minute promotional film shown by FTI about the tourist areas visited by representatives of the German travel agencies, as it stood out for presenting their personal experiences during their trip and highlighting how much they enjoyed visiting the various tourist cities, with professional filming and directing focused on everything that appeals to target tourists.
He added that the film is among the most wonderful publicity for Egypt he has seen, and could be used by the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority in its international promotional campaigns, noting that FTI would not refuse this given the benefit it would bring to Egypt, because the goal is ultimately the same.
He pointed out that FTI was keen to clarify that the recent events in El-Arish are geographically very far from Sharm El-Sheikh, which is negatively affected by any incident in North Sinai despite being completely distant from it.
According to tourism statistics obtained exclusively by "Travel Yalla News," German tourism to Egypt recorded about 975,000 arrivals from January to the end of October 2017, up 92% on the same period last year, spending 10 million tourist nights, an increase of 149%. Germany is thus leading the way in approaching one million tourists to Egypt this year and tops inbound tourism without rival, having comfortably exceeded the numbers achieved in the same period of 2015, before the Russian plane crisis, which recorded 848,000 tourists.
