With a view to promote and upgrade the tourism sector, Tunisian authorities The authorities have commissioned, a strategic study on prospects of the tourism sector by 2016.
Conducted by the International Consulting Office Roland Berger, the survey was carried out along 3 axes, definition of the strategy for developing the sector and working out an action plan to this end.
The survey stressed that in spite of its confirmed know-how, Tunisian tourism suffers from several insufficiencies: strong seasonality (mainly seaside product and its activities culminated between May and October), a lack of diversification in accommodation offers (mainly ageing hotels) in addition to the strong concentration on tour operators.
Diagnosis points out to an image deficit and a not very competitive marketing, compared with other destinations.
For instance, the overall budget dedicated to communication in Tunisia stood at 27 million euros in 2009, while Morocco spent twice as much (49 million euros) and it was more than 4 times in Turkey (82 million euros).
To jumpstart the sector on new bases, the survey recommends to act on four planes: improve the offer, stimulate demand, step up competitiveness and the sector's durability.
As regards improving the offer's overall quality, the survey proposes to diversify products, subjects and accommodation modes.
A special interest was taken in a communication focusing on innovative products, improving entertainment activities, upgrading the offer, reviewing the current ranking standards and control and incentive mechanisms (bonus/extra premium).
Concerning the stimulation of demand, the survey calls for devising a brand strategy of the local tourist product and its components, adopting ambitious marketing plans, developing domestic tourism, consolidating positioning on neighboring markets and reinforcing presence on the Net.
In the prospect of a long-term registration of the tourist sector, the same survey suggests a set of actions: adapting tourist governance to the sector's new requirements, reviewing the training model and integrating the sustained development issues in the future strategies.
It is to the survey's credit that it has assisted its projects by concrete actions presenting for their part the advantage of being included in the budget and spread out on a well determined period (July 2010-December 2016).
The set of these actions come in five strategic axes touching upon diversifying and innovating the offer, promotion and marketing, developing the institutional framework, restructuring the sector's financial situation and changing into compatible web tourism.
Concretely, some twenty priority actions and 160 measures were identified. Efforts will focus on developing the quality charter "Jasmine," encouraging innovation (institutionalize innovating projects' assistance, re-fitting tourist areas, etc.) diversifying tourist accommodation types and favoring the development of new accommodation modes).
As to promotion, interest will be taken in increasing air partners, adopting a marketing approach by country (launching targeted communication campaigns, adopting a new marketing approach in function of markets), establishing a new factual policy (creation of an international-scale event in connection with Tunisia's tourist wealth) and diversifying financing sources. Modernization of the institutional framework is the other project to be achieved.
Other actions will be carried out including re-organizing the institutional system, setting up a structure of projects and upgrading professional training in order to adapt training to the sector's new needs.
Accordingly, it will include restructuring the financial situation of Tunisian tourism is one of the measures to be taken in the future.
Efforts will focus on assessing the hotels' financial situation and rehabilitating units in difficulty.
For the stake of adapting tourism to the customers' new requirements (booking on the Net, etc.) and intensifying to this end ICT' utilization, the action plan provides for reviewing the website of the National Board of Tunisian Tourism (ONTT), reconstructing it around 3 spaces (Intranet, Extranet and general public.), setting up e-governance, consolidating training in e-tourism (planning training sessions of on-line tourism within hotel institutes, etc.).
These actions will undoubtedly contribute to achieve objectives set by the presidential program for the next five years.
The ultimate goal is to get closer to the objective of 10 million tourists a year, generate revenues worth 5365.7 million dinars, achieve a bed-night rate of 54.3% and reach 260,300 beds by 2014.
Meanwhile, Tunisian tourism, a strategic activity, manages an overall accommodation capacity of 250,000 beds, contributes by means of 7% to GDP, provides nearly 400,000 direct and indirect jobs, and partly compensates for the trade balance deficit by hard currency receipts a year (20% at total).
© Tunisia Online News 2010
