The curved arrow on the photo behind the Minister of Tourism on the poster was rising. The reality and statements show however that it will change direction this year 2022, certainly under the butterfly effect of the war between Europe and Russia, but not only!
First of all, because, as the president of the Tunisian Federation of the Hotel Industry (FTH), Dorra Milad, said, “the hoteliers are not yet ready for the resumption of their business.”
The daughter of the illustrious Aziz Miled, who would never have been so bad in communication, spoke on March 1st, at a seminar organized under the theme of “Is Tunisia ready for the tourist recovery?”, and explained this by “the deteriorating state of hotels”. These are rather clumsy assertions for a professional in a sector where image is decisive, and where the “shock of words is stronger than the weight of photos”, to reverse an advertising slogan of a well-known French magazine.
– Dorra Miled’s clumsiness
However, Dorra Miled, who was speaking that day at a seminar where bankers were present, in the name of a corporation that is preparing for new wage negotiations with the UGTT, had probably deliberately darkened the line.
And perhaps she had forgotten the basics of marketing during the Booking period, and what the T0s that her colleagues are courting would think when they heard her statements.
Tunisian tourism, which had recorded 9 million tourists in 2020, had not completely collapsed despite the 3.6 billion losses of this year 2020.
Like almost every year since before the COVID-19 crisis, Tunisian hoteliers are asking for even more bank credits and state aid, while many of them drive big sedans and some of them get married in millions of Dinars.
Perhaps she had also forgotten that a good manager always foresees an amount to be put aside for maintenance, that more than one hotelier had for example redeployed his buses towards other activities to keep them in business.
At the time, Fouad Bouslama, the first vice-president of the Tunisian Federation of Tourist Restaurants (FTRT) had told a parliamentary plenary session last June that the accumulated litigious debts of the tourist units have exceeded 4 thousand billion over the last 35 years, 58% of which is bank interest, and the figures mention 300 indebted hotels.
But not all of them are really in debt or bankrupt, and we still see them investing, but in other more lucrative sectors.
– The Russian butterfly effect
During the same seminar, we learned that current bookings are about 50% of what was achieved during the same period of 2019, and that “Tunisia plans to reach this year 2022 between 50 and 60% of the tourist arrivals achieved in 2019”, according to Minister of Tourism, Mohamed Moez Belhassine. The minister is certainly a little optimistic, but he is in his role.
But as we know, misfortune never comes alone. No sooner has it emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and become CovidSafe, than Tunisia falls under the effect of the war declared by Russia against Ukraine.
In 2019, now a reference year after the one in 2010, which will have to be forgotten, Tunisia had welcomed some 630,000 Russian tourists and 33,000 Ukrainians, and the booking for these two nationalities would already be in place.
In 2022, we will have to forget these two nationalities of tourists from a Europe that looks at the Russian bombs every day, counts its hundreds of thousands of refugees and prepares for the worst.
And it is not the latest Tunisian vote against Russian aggression in Ukraine that will improve things. Diplomatic Tunisia has chosen its side. Will the Europeans, whose tourism has been closing in on its lands since COVID-19, understand this?
We can thus better understand the pessimism of Houssem Ben Azouz of the Joint Professional Federation of Tourism, which rather expects to achieve at best 30% of the tourism figures for the year 2019 when Tunisia had welcomed nearly 9.5 million visitors.
That figure was then described as a performance, since it was up by 13.6% compared to the previous season; and, at the same time, foreign exchange receipts up by 35.7% with more than 5.6 billion dinars, according to the report of Tunisia’s tourist office for that year.
These figures are now to be forgotten, not only because of the international situation, but also because of certain professionals in the sector.
