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MEETING THREATS HEAD-ON
BY REHAB EL BAKRY
Amid a series of attacks targeting tourists, newly-appointed Minister of Tourism Zohair Garana is fighting back. He has big plans to pull in more visitors. How will he accomplish it? He’ll start by changing attitudes.
As a 25-year veteran of the tourism industry, Zohair Garana had a good idea why the sector was not realizing its full potential. When tapped as tourism minister in last January’s cabinet reshuffle, he suddenly had the opportunity to translate his vision into reality. And so he hit the ground running.
If Garana’s performance in the private sector portends future success, then he may prove any doubters wrong. Garana got his start early, working at the family’s travel agency after graduating in 1981 from Helwan University’s tourism and hotel management program. During his tenure, the business grew from a single agency with six employees into several companies, employing over 1,800, with interests in everything from hotels to Nile cruises. “I started out from the very bottom, as they say, until I eventually became the managing director of the majority of our companies,” he says.
If the experience gave him anything, it’s confidence. Garana makes no attempt to conceal it. “I’ve always been one of those people who rolls up his sleeves and works with his own hands, so I have done every job you can imagine when it comes to this industry,” he says. “I understand every aspect of this industry. I am a tourism guy through and through.”
The newly-minted tourism minister broke with tradition early on. While it is customary for new ministers to replace existing programs with their own, Garana opted to implement the development strategy of his predecessor, Ahmed El Maghraby. Garana knew the plan well. After all, he helped draft it during the time he spent as a consultant to El Maghraby. “When I took over, I [wanted] to ensure that the initiatives launched continued,” says Garana. “This is the plan of where we want to be in 20 to 30 years.”
He hopes other ministers will follow his lead and upon taking office, evaluate ongoing policies and adopt those deemed successful. “This is a very big problem with the Egyptian people,” he says. “Whenever someone takes over, they have to come in with new ideas. It’s very good to come in with new ideas, but if there is a strategy that is already in place, then you should continue with it. If you have something new in mind, you can always add it.”
The ministry’s plan aims to draw 9.6 million tourists this year, up from 8.6 million last year. Standing in the way, however, are currents he cannot control. “This is a very sensitive industry; one of the major problems with tourism is that all the strings are with somebody else. All the decisions are up to somebody else and usually there is nothing that you can do about it.”
Egypt has not had three consecutive years without some event or tragedy that hurt tourism, Garana points out. “One of the outcomes of this fact is that [the industry] has become very good at dealing with these incidents. We have a lot of experience in dealing with crises. We are in very close contact with our business partners such as major tour operators and the chambers of tourism in countries that provide us with a lot of tourists.”
Since every crisis is different, Garana says, each one requires a different strategy. “Sometimes, the answer is simply for us to halt advertising and marketing altogether for a while and then we start again with a very heavy campaign. The key is that when you start, you should have only one message.”
The latest crisis has been the resurgence of terrorist activities in recent years after a lull of nearly a decade. Three Sinai resort towns have been bombed over the last 19 months – Dahab on April 24, Sharm Al Sheikh in July 2005 and Taba in October 2004. Some 140 Egyptians and foreigners were killed and scores injured in these attacks.
While Garana would not comment specifically on the issue, he noted that terrorism is a global phenomenon. “Everyone has been touched by terrorism and everyone is worried about the safety of their own people traveling abroad. Egypt is no exception.”
At the same time, he concedes, there is nothing anyone in the tourism industry can do about reducing the threat. All they can do is to keep plowing ahead, which is exactly what they have done – and will do.
For his part, Garana is focusing on those things he can control. He recently launched a two-pronged approach to bolster tourism: one that aims to educate Egyptians on the value of tourism, and the other that introduces innovative new tourist products.
Garana believes most Egyptians have forgotten the important role tourism plays in the economy as a job creator and source of hard currency. Because of this change in attitude, he argues, the Egyptian people are no longer one of the selling points of Egypt as a holiday destination. “We’re going to build it up again,” he declares. “It’s going to be hard simply because it’s always easier to lose ground than it is to gain back what you had.”
To that end, the tourism ministry has begun a public awareness campaign on radio and television. The spots use 75 “ambassadors,” one for every million people living in Egypt, from diverse professions: actors, singers, business people, cab drivers and sales clerks, among others. “The message is very clear, that we can’t forget how important this tourism sector is to Egypt and to the Egyptian people. This is a key factor that not everyone understands. Tourism brings in revenues and investments. Without the investments, there would be a lot of work opportunities lost.”
According to Garana, tourism creates about 11.6 percent of all jobs in Egypt. Its benefits also spill over into approximately 70 other industries, from restaurants to construction. “The problem is that I don’t think most Egyptians are engaged enough and the campaign aims at doing just that.”
The second prong is to continue developing new tourist spots. In the 1970s and 1980s, Egypt relied on popular historic and cultural sites, such as the Giza Pyramids. In the 1990s, the strategy expanded to include Red Sea resorts, such as Sharm Al Sheikh and Hurghada. “The introduction of these products expanded our tourist base – where they come from, how much they spend and how long they stay,” Garana says. “But we need to develop even more products in order to increase the number of tourists.”
The ministry is working to improve shopping and entertainment. It is also building more residences to be used as second homes for long-term tourists as part of its efforts to establish a residential tourism industry. Opponents charge this will hurt hotel occupancy rates and drive up real estate prices. Garana disagrees. He believes more accommodation will just draw new visitors, who stay longer.
Perhaps the biggest idea so far is developing the North Coast – a swath of gorgeous beaches stretching nearly 1,000 kilometers along the Mediterranean coast from Alexandria westwards to the Libyan border. A favorite summer destination for Egyptians, these fine beaches have been off the radar screen for international tourism. To change this, Garana argues, will require major investment. So what exactly does Garana imagine?
”We are creating a city,” he says, referring to Ras Al Hekma, a 65-kilometer-long strip of undeveloped beachfront property close to Marsa Matrouh that the ministry has designated for the project. He says Ras Al Hekma will be a fully-integrated community with its own services and amenities. “We are creating a city and it’s going to be an upscale thing,” he says. “We’re talking about hotels, marinas, shops, bars, nightlife, hotel apartments, residential [complexes], and huge commercial centers and mega malls. It will also have hospitals, medical centers, education institutes and a university.”
The ministry has been rife with internal debate over the proposal, Garana confides. “Will the plan succeed? Can it attract investors? Should the plan even move forward?” were among the fundamental questions discussed.
Garana admits he was a skeptic at first. “I was one of the people against it because I didn’t believe it could work,” he says. “With time, I saw the investors that were planning to come into the market, and I came around. Now, I believe that this is going to be one of the biggest and most successful tourist developments in Egypt in recent years.”
Garana expects the North Coast development will boost Egypt’s tourist numbers. But the minister is not only interested in drawing new tourists, he wants them to keep coming back. Currently, about 20 percent do. But with improvements, he thinks the rate could reach 30 percent. “People who have already been to Egypt are the base on which I will build. This is keeping in mind that there are people who save for years to be able to visit Egypt.”
Although he thinks it is unfair, Garana acknowledges that Egypt’s tourism industry is often compared to Spain’s. “It has very good weather and is our biggest competitor in winter,” he explains. “Their biggest advantages are good services and good infrastructure, making it very appealing for people who travel.”
If Spain is used as a measuring stick, Egypt has a long way to go. Spain gets 48 million tourists a year, partly because of its close proximity to the rest of Europe. Its tourism infrastructure is also much better with 750,000 hotel rooms and 3.6 million residential houses available. By comparison, Egypt has just 172,000 hotel rooms and only a handful of residential homes for tourists, all of which are recent creations.
While there has been talk for the past few years about branding in Egypt, Garana does not consider it a priority. In fact, he doubts it can even work. “You can’t brand the Pyramids,” he says. “It is already a brand on its own.” Yet he admits that any attempt to brand Egypt will inevitably be sure to involve the Pyramids.
While Garana hopes to change the attitude of Egyptians – who he believes “need to be more liberal in the way they think” – he also thinks it is time the government mature in its management of tourism resources. “We have to deal with the decision-making process so that people simply don’t dream up decisions in the middle of the night and expect you to deal with them.”
Garana admits achieving his vision will not be easy. “Actually, it’s a lot more difficult than I had imagined when I first got the post,” he says. “The challenges are bigger. It’s like struggling to make it going uphill on a very slippery slope. But this is one fight we all know that we can’t afford to lose.”
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