Tag Archives: Switzerland Tourism

More than 100 tourism representatives from Austria, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland will gather in Dubai later this month at the Discover Europe Travel Summit with the aim of strengthening relationships and exploring new opportunities within the Middle East travel market. The two-day networking event will take place at 25Hours Hotel Dubai One Central from April 29-30, the weekend immediately prior to the start of the Arabian Travel Market (ATM), the region’s largest travel exhibition. Promising an ideal prelude to ATM, Discover Europe is held in partnership with the European Travel Commission and set to draw attendance of at least 110 GCC buyers specialising in the culture and luxury sectors of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Set to feature presentations from the four national tourism boards along with one-to-one meetings and networking events, the summit will bring together buyers and exhibitors holding just under 4,500 meetings. Miguel Gallego, Head of Marketing at the European Travel Commission, said: “As we prepare to kick off the Discover Europe Travel Summit in Dubai, we are thrilled to be a partner at an event that has been collaborating with GCC buyers to strengthen our existing relationships and explore new opportunities. Our goal is to foster long-lasting partnerships and promote Europe’s rich culture, history, and natural beauty to the discerning travellers of the GCC region. We believe that by working together, we can create innovative travel experiences that showcase the best of what Europe has to offer and pave the way for a bright future of travel industry growth and success.” Michael Tauschmann, Head of Markets Middle East & India at the Austrian National Tourist Office, concluded: “It is an absolute privilege …

At the recently concluded Switzerland tourism roadshow where they hosted over 100 trade partners recently as the final of their GCC roadshow with 18 key partners that showcased their offerings from tourism boards, hotels, Railways, cablecars, airline and DMCs, it was shared that they had achieved 20% more in terms of visitors than pre pandemic or 2019. Matthias Albrecht, Director Switzerland tourism stated, “This is the last roadshow for the year. Roadshows are very important as we meet people directly in their own home ground. As we all know there are many possibilities to book online and its important to speak to people on digital channels but we all know the big families, VIPs don’t want to stay online for many hours and compare they want the travel agents to organise, add additional rooms or connecting doors, especially in this region this will stay, these contacts are able to arrange everything for them, we are here to meet these contacts.” Speaking on the year that was, “it was a fantastic year, we had a great start, there was a survey conducted early 2022, it was asking many UAE residents and nationals about their favourite travel destination and Switzerland became third after Dubai and Abu Dhabi which are both within UAE which means Switzerland the most prominent and most popular destination outside the UAE which is a fantastic result and of course helped us a lot to advertise Switzerland throughout the year.” This summer proved to be good for most destinations, Albrecht shared, “there is one figure which we received from September comparing now to 2019, pre pandemic and we are 20 percent plus from the whole of GCC which is …

Having promoted the destination heavily during Expo 2020 and at Discover Europe Travel Summit in Dubai, Switzerland tourism continues to work with the travel trade from the GCC to experience the destination physically. According to Matthias Albrecht, Director GCC, Switzerland Tourism, they will be further enhancing cooperation with the GCC travel trade in two very important roadshows. Albrecht reiterated, “GCC travel trade is most important to us and for the next quarter we have planned two events, one to be held in Switzerland by inviting the most important decision makers in the travel trade and the other one will be visiting around 30 Swiss partners within all GCC countries. The first workshop will be conducted in Switzerland for GCC travel trade in September with 50 – 60 key decision makers from the GCC being already invited. This workshop will give them an opportunity to interact directly with over 80 Swiss tourism suppliers as well as to learn more about new places, different areas, latest attractions, new hotels, and other experiences offered. The second roadshow will be in November in the GCC where we will meet around 600 to 700 agents from the GCC.” Switzerland has been promoting their Swisstainable initiative with the GCC and the rest of the world in making tourism more sustainable. The four pillars of this project will also be shared during the roadshows and workshop planned for the rest of the year.