TUNIS, May 27 (NNN-AFRICANEWS) — Tunisia’s economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic with its revenues from tourism down by over 60%.
The North African country had to order a week-long partial lockdown at the start of May due to a surge in coronavirus cases after reopening its borders to tour agencies in late April.
But now, with up to 10 flights a week arriving at Enfidha airport mostly from Russia and eastern Europe, this past month, Tunisia hopes to revive its tourism sector.
While tourists from most of the West are deterred from travel by their home countries, travelers from Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland appeared to have few such qualms.
“Customers from eastern Europe are less than reticent, less concerned about the pandemic,” said Zied Maghrebi, marketing director of the nearby Movenpick hotel.
“We have fallen back on these customers because they’re not afraid to travel.”
Tourists that arrive in tour groups are only required to show a negative PCR test unlike other visiting travelers must self-isolate for five to seven days in government-assigned hotels at their own expense.
As far as excursions are concerned, only select tours organized by travel agents who uphold coronavirus-prevention sanitary measures are permitted.
Hotels are authorized to operate at 50% of capacity but are struggling to reach that level.
Tunisia sees 12,000 COVID-related deaths with only around 2% of the population vaccinated, thus far. Figures that do not seem to matter to these Eastern European tourists.
Taoufik Gaied, the Sousse tourism commissioner is hopeful to revive the tourism industry.
“We hope to have a recovery, I would say perhaps positively, that it would be the beginning of the season. We hope that it continues like that. And that the flow [of tourist arrivals, editor’s note] increases from one week to the next.”
He is holding out hope for one million tourists in 2021 — still, just a fraction of the nine million who came two years ago.
The International Monetary Fund projects a GDP growth of 3.8% this year for Tunisia. A nice step forward 2020’s 8.9%contraction. — NNN-AFRICANEWS
