Tourism Ministry Preparing Trip Program For Egyptian Tourism Operators

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - The Tourism Ministry is preparing a familiarization trip (Famtrip) program for Egyptian tourism operators who will be visiting Jakarta, Bandung and Bali from March 26 to April 1, 2016.

"They are Egyptian tour travel and tourism operators," Nia Niscaya, an assistant deputy for African, United States, European and Middle Eastern marketing affairs of the Tourism Ministry, said here on Sunday.

The Famtrip is a program of the Tourism Ministry where foreign tourism operators are invited to Indonesia to visit its main tourism destinations.

The Tourism Ministry hopes that with the program, foreign tourism operators would help promote Indonesia's tourism to foreign tourists in their respective countries.

Nia said her ministry has organized several Famtrip programs this year. On January 22-29, travel and tour operators from Saudi Arabia came to Indonesia for the program.

Tour and travel operators from Britain also visited Indonesia on March 5-11, 2016, she said.

Currently, a number of tourism operators from the Middle East are visiting Indonesia until March 25, 2016.

The Middle East is Indonesia's largest 'halal' tourism market because the number of traveling tourists from the Middle East in 2015 reached 140 million. It is bigger than the Chinese tourism market.

The Famtrip program will direct the Egyptian tourism operators to witness Indonesian tourism excellences regarding its meeting, incentive, conference and exhibition (MICE) facilities.

Therefore, they will be taken to Jakarta, Bandung (West Java) and the Indonesian tourist resort Island of Bali. These three cities already have large convention halls with international standard facilities such as star hotels, good access to airports and convenient  destinations.

"Egypt has a relatively large number of population reaching 90 million people. It is interesting to observe that the political situation in that country is currently not stable but the number of Egyptians  holidaying in various countries remains high," she said. (WDY)