Loadsamoney! (Just under $100 worth of Uzbek Som)
According to the GfK Ascent Survey of 15,000 UK holidaymakers in 2009, as presented at the CIMTIG organised Travel Vision 2010 evening, UK tourist numbers for last year to Egypt are up 20% and Turkey up 9%. On the downside the Canary Islands have seen a drop of a massive 22%, while numbers are also heavily down in Italy (19%), Cyprus (15%), Greece (13%) and Spain (13%).
These are quite dramatic numbers, and spell a serious issue for the traditional Mediterranean destinations who have built much of their success on the back of the British holidaymaker. What do all these countries suffering a slump have in common? The most obvious explanation is the Euro, against which the pound has weakened heavily in the last three years (although it has been fairly stable for almost 18 months now). We heard how American tourism patterns changed when the dollar tanked in the last decade, with less Americans coming to Europe and to Japan. As Europeans we also noticed how those places that tied their currencies to the US dollar suddenly became more attractive to the rest of us.
But on closer examination something doesn’t make sense here. If we look at the big winner in this survey it is Egypt, enjoying a 20% boost in UK visitors in 2009 alone. The explanation presented for this was that the strength of the Euro is driving Brits to look for better value elsewhere. Yet the British currency has fallen by almost exactly the same amount against the Egyptian currency as it has against the Euro (11 Egyptian pounds to the GBP in 2008 and a little over 8 today).
So why the major change in tourist hot-spot from Spanish and Greek resorts to Egyptian ones? I must admit until I heard these figures I had no reason to check the state of the Egyptian currency, but I had heard much of the PR that had told us all that people were looking to take their holidays away from the Eurozone and that Egypt and Turkey seemed to be the obvious alternatives.
I suspect most people have no inclination to study currency markets (I find them fascinating but I am aware that this is not a very cool admission to make). So if the message is that the Euro countries are expensive and it’s best to go outside of the Eurozone to make your money go further, then perhaps a lot of people have taken this at face value and headed off to Thomas Cook and asked for a holiday to Egypt or Turkey.
Which really leads me to commend the Egyptian tourism authorities on an excellent job well done. They have managed to jump on the bandwagon of anti-Eurozone publicity and reap rich rewards, without anyone holding up their hands and pointing out that their currency has gained in strength at the same pace as the now expensive Euro. It looks to me like a marketing strategy of keeping your head down while making money; and it is being executed with much success.
The euro-scare is undoubtedly real but there has also been some extremely hard work going on to achieve this success. As a travel writer who works with many of the tourist offices in the UK and writes about both Egypt and Turkey, the current Egyptian and Turkish Tourist Offices and PRs are noticeably good at what they do. And interestingly, while in Cairo recently, those in the ETA there, also talked of Khaled Ramy, currently in charge of the London office, with huge respect as the man to learn from. All too many tourist offices wave pretty brochures around but don’t deliver the real practical help needed. Those that focus and are efficient get results.
Great post, Andy. Another reason for Egypt’s success is simply long-term investment. If British holidaymakers, rightly or wrongly, are looking outside the Eurozone, why aren’t tourism numbers in Jordan or Morocco or Tunisia going through the roof? Because they haven’t pursued mass-market tourism with anything like the same vigour that Egypt (and Turkey) have done over the last 10-15 years. They aren’t as rich.
In the previous comment, Melissa mentioned the tourist offices – if you compare the budget for promoting Egyptian and Turkish tourism in the UK, as compared to budgets for Jordan or other countries – well, there IS no comparison. Egypt outspends them by a factor of ten-to-one.
Because of that fact alone, Egypt is able to overturn the most serious threat to tourism on the fringes of the Eurozone: a reputation for violence. As far as mass tourism goes, Jordan is perceived as rough, dangerous and rather edgy; Egypt is swanky beach resorts, cheap ‘door-to-door’ direct flights and sun/sea/sand. That’s not about reality: that’s about PR… and not even good or bad PR – simply PR budgets. Throw money at a bad reputation and it will go away. Max Clifford has made a very good living out of that.
But the fact that nobody in the British travel media picked up on the fact that YOU have picked up on, Andy – namely that Egypt is exactly the same (poor) value as the Euro countries – should be a kick in the teeth. Lazy journalism. Brilliant blogging.
Thank you Melissa and Matthew for your valuable inputs. You’ve both mentioned some of the good ways (or at least effective ones) in which Egypt and Turkey have been attracting their increased numbers. One thing springs to mind, particularly with the mention of Jordan.
I have attended several USTOA (US Tour Operator Association) annual meetings in recent years, and each time the Jordanian tourism authorities have put on a lavish lunch, showering the delegates with Jordanian gifts, showing dazzling presentations and giving confident speeches about the benefits of visting Jordan. The audience at these three-day bashes is made up mainly of US tour operators, and clearly the strategy is to entice these companies to go out and sell Jordan to their customers.
Given your knowledge of the tourism sector in the Middle East I would be interested to get your views on whether Jordan is indeed investing its efforts at selling to the trade rather than directly to the end-consumer. And if it is, is this part of the explanation of their relative lack of success in pulling in western tourists? Travelling on the tube I see many Egyptian and Turkish tourism ads, more than for any other destination.
Even if the Egyptian Pound moves up against the British Pound, it is still cheap. As the Euro goes up, it makes something which is expensive move so.
it isn’t the movement of the currency, so much as the cost of living behind the currency.
hi again Andy. It’s an interesting point. I’d suggest the key issue is still money. The only reason you see more ads for Egypt and Turkey on the tube is because those countries have UK-specific marketing budgets in the zillions: if (say) £50,000 represents (say) 1% of your annual budget, then you might as well use it for a heavy-duty ad campaign on the tube – since you’ve almost certainly spent considerably more than that already in other, much more effective ways, such as marketing to the trade, training – and rewarding – tour operators so they can sell more of your product, and so on.
However, if that 50K is (say) 10% of your annual budget, then spending it on ads in the tube – which give a very poor return on investment in terms of raising tourist numbers: virtually all their benefit is in intangible consciousness-raising – makes no sense. You’d do better shunting that 50K into targeted media promotions, or something that creates a bit of a buzz and has an identifiable impact… but, of course, 50K can only do that in a limited way, mostly in a very specific market niche. To get a nationwide buzz going, or to start to turn around the reputation of a whole country, you need ten or twenty times that much – so Jordan (and others) can never get close. Think of Cambodia as against Thailand, or Uganda as against Kenya.
And those Egypt ad campaigns on TV, both in the UK and globally on CNN, BBC World etc. Those 30-second spots alone probably cost more to produce and broadcast than Jordan’s entire annual tourism budget.
It’s always a balancing act. In the UK, Jordan are doing their best – with limited resources – in trying to target individual consumers with specific niche-market messages, while also focusing on important trade connections: keeping those tour operators who already take groups to Jordan happy, trying to encourage other operators to launch Jordan for their clients by hosting ‘fam’ trips to showcase new products. There aren’t many glitzy jamborees!
What you’re seeing with the flashy lunches and give-aways is Jordan’s national tourism promotion office taking the lead. In my experience they tend to think big-picture: their goal is simply to boost bottom-line numbers. It is more straightforward – and, crucially, more trackable & accountable – to spend money persuading one tour operator to start offering Jordan, and thereby bring (say) 2,000 more tourists a year, than it is to spend money trying to persuade 2,000 individuals to go on holiday to Jordan this year rather than Peru, Thailand or Egypt.
Getting positive messages about tourism through to the mass-market in the UK is incredibly expensive – and, in the case of Middle East countries in the news, incredibly difficult. Aside from anything else, Egypt is physically large enough that it is able to siphon the vast majority of its European tourists away to the remote Red Sea coasts, where they fly in & out of dedicated holiday airports and never set foot in ‘Egypt proper’: tour operators collude in this, of course, marketing their holidays as ‘Red Sea’ to avoid saying ‘Egypt’ (which might raise alarm bells).
A smaller, poorer country such as Jordan, with less experience in tourism marketing, fewer opportunities for tourism development, more limited tourism infrastructure – and, it must be said, a more equitable society – will always be playing catch-up in terms of the mass market. Where it CAN score is in niche tourism, specifically sustainability, responsible tourism and nature-based product. But they don’t bring in the numbers… or the cash…
Holidays to Egypt and even in Turkey are still cheaper option then holidaying in popular European destinations. And in near future it won’t change. Additionally in those countries one can find fantastic monuments of history, remains of several ancient civilizations.
Holiday to Egypt can be also a cheaper version of Carribean or Pacific Islands. There are nearest to Europe coral reefs and fantastic opportunities of snorkeling and diving.
Jack
http://www.bestsunholidays.co.uk