HEENA MAHAJAN – New Delhi
Egypt has emerged as a hotspot with Indian tourists and to keep up with this growing trend, the Egypt Tourism Authority (ETA) is planning to further capitalise on India’s outbound market. The authority would now also promote Egypt’s beaches, sea activities, resorts, golf courses, eco tourism, and its rich therapeutic tourism of sulphur and mineral springs. ETA has also made presentations to the Indian corporates to boost its MICE segment which currently accounts for 30 per cent of its total tourism revenue.
 |
| Adel EI Masry |
Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Adel EI Masry director, ETA India said, “ETA plans to capitalise on India’s growing outbound market. The year 2008 concluded with the Indo-Arab Cultural Forum that has exposed Egypt’s art and culture amongst Indians. The year 2009 began with the launch of Visit Egypt 2009 campaign at a gala cultural night at the Egyptian Embassy in New Delhi. Egypt was also the partner country at the two-week long 23rd Surajkund Crafts Mela in Faridabad from February 1-15, 2009.”
It has also tied up with various travel agents like Kuoni India to promote tourism to Egypt. “Apart from this, we are also promoting Egypt as a Bollywood destination as the country has perfect scenic locations for shoots. It continues to lure the India market with its road-shows and other promotional activities as well,” he added.
“We see Asia and India in particular becoming a big source market on the leisure as well as MICE front and that’s precisely the reason behind we opening our office here and allocating significant funds for marketing and promotional exercise in India. We are focusing on offering variety of products catering to different age groups. The new product will be categorised as MICE, honeymoon, golf, marine, adventure and wellness. We will promote religious and wellness tourism with the older tourist while it will be cultural and adventure tourism for middle aged in addition to honeymoon tourism for the newly wed. Off late, Egypt has been attracting good number of business tourists who choose the destination for their meetings, incentives, convention and corporate events. We foresee good traction from Indian corporate segment in the coming year,” he added.
