Tunisia is inviting Qatari investors to participate in more than 10 major projects for the development of the North African country’s tourism industry, a government official said yesterday.
Selma Elloumi Rekik, Tunisia’s Minister of Tourism and Handicrafts, said the country is diversifying its touristic products through various tourism-related projects, including two major projects with a combined value of more than $600mn.
Earlier, Rekik held a series of meetings with different Qatari organisations, including an audience with Qatar Businessmen Association chairman HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani at the QBA headquarters yesterday.
“The meeting with Sheikh Faisal was mainly dedicated to invite Qatari investors to come to Tunisia this coming October 19 and 20 for a forum aimed at promoting investment opportunities in various industries, including tourism,” Rekik told Gulf Times on the sidelines of the meeting. “The second objective of our visit is to promote the image of Tunisia because it is not quite known here. And our strategy now is to diversify our tourism industry because our touristic product is mainly beach tourism,” the minister further said.
She noted that Tunisia’s traditional market is Europe, mainly visitors from France and Germany.
But government’s diversification drive is also targeting markets from the Gulf and other Arabic countries, as well as China and Russia.
“Now, our orientation is different. Considering that we have a 3,000-year history and more 40,000 historical sites, we’re focusing to promote these as a tourist destination, including other sectors like medical tourism, mainly in surgery and aesthetic medicine. We receive more than 500,000 visitors for medical tourism per year,” she said.
According to Rekik, Tunisia receives more than 6mn tourists per year but the government aims to breach the 6.5mn mark this year.
In 2015, she said terror attacks “have affected visitor arrivals,” prompting the government to hold an investment forum on October.
“But today, the situation has changed and the message we want to impart is that Tunisia has made great strides in improving our security.
The situation in 2016 has improved but in the first quarter of 2017, we recorded a more than 35% upswing in tourist arrivals,” she emphasised.
For his part, Sheikh Faisal expressed the Qatari business community’s “keen interest” to discuss “potential cooperation and investment opportunities, whether in Qatar or Tunisia.”
“The economic boom in Qatar had led companies and business institutions to seek investment opportunities in the local and international markets,” Sheikh Faisal noted during the meeting, which was also attended by QBA board members Sherida al-Kaabi and Ibrahim al-Jaidah, as well as deputy general manager Sarah Abdullah.

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