São Paulo – The Egyptian Mohammed Youssef Darwich holds a degree in Civil Engineering, but by providing services in the tourism sector to pay for college, he wound up coming across Brazil. Darwich learned of the country’s growth and tried to talk some entrepreneur into funding a business to target the market. No one bought into his idea. Still, he arrived in São Paulo approximately six years ago, with virtually nothing in his pocket, and proved that he was right about how favourable Brazil is for tourism: he established Egípcia Tours, a tour operator with three units in the city.
The company sets up travel packages, mostly to the Middle East, and sells them to travel agencies. Egípcia Tours offers options to virtually the entire world and to destinations in Brazil, but its focus is 99% international, with an emphasis in the Middle East. In the region, Darwich says, the highlights are Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Dubai, Morocco and Tunisia. “Brazil is a fertile market, it’s new to the world, competition around here is not that fierce yet, there are few companies for so many tourists,” says the Egyptian.
Darwich has bold plans for the country. By 2016 he intends to open roughly 20 new branches in Brazilian capitals and major cities, such as São José do Rio Preto, Santo André, Curitiba, Chapecó, Joinvile, Santos and Foz do Iguaçu, as well as other São Paulo neighbourhoods such as Tatuapé and Santana. The three units he has are in Brooklin, Morumbi and the Centre. “I want to open branches throughout Brazil. The country has 200 million inhabitants and it has begun developing a travel culture. You need to get closer to the customer,” he says.
The goal of the engineer is to tread the path he pictured back in Egypt, i.e. to own a large company. Financial conditions were what drove Darwich to come to Brazil. In order to go to college in his country, he had help from his mother, but he also worked provided one or another service in tourism, such as holding signs at airports and driving tourists around, for instance, to be able to complete his course. At the time, when he started talking about Brazil to potential investors, what he would get the reply that it was a poor country.
Upon finishing college, Darwich received a proposal to work in engineering with one of his professors. But what he would earn was less than the tips he would get working in tourism. He then came to Brazil, with little cash in his pocket, and rented a house near Cracolândia [a crack-infested neighbourhood], in the Centre of São Paulo. It was the best he could get. He then opened a virtual business in the tourism field, and then a business in the house he rented. Thus he gradually prospered and made Egípcia Tours grow.
At first, the company was meant to focus only on the Middle East, but the entrepreneur soon realized that it was best to broaden his scope. An Egípcia Tours package, for instance, will take 450 people to see Corinthians in the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan in December this year. By offering a higher number of destinations, the operator had no problems as trips to Egypt declined due to the Arab Spring, nor to Syria, where conflicts are now taking place. Demand for tourism in Egypt, according to Darwich, began rebounding in this half of the year, but remains at 20% of 2010 levels.
Darwich, who is 29, says it was worth it to move to Brazil, that he loves the country, and does not plan on going to Egypt to live there. Some of his brothers are living in Brazil and his mother and brothers who stayed back in Egypt should move next year. But he speaks fondly of his land. “I am very saddened by instability in my country, it is really sad to see all that happening in the country that taught me almost everything about life,” he says. From now on he will travel to the Middle East as an entrepreneur. Next year, Egípcia will participate in several international fairs, including one in Dubai.
Contact:
Egípcia Tours
Telephone: +55 11 3729-0793
Website: www.egipciatours.com
Email: reservas@egipciatours.com
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum