São Paulo – Royal Air Maroc, the Moroccan airline, is adding a frequency from São Paulo to Casablanca next December or January. This will bring weekly São Paulo-Morocco flights to four, plus two leaving from Rio de Janeiro, making up a total of six Brazil-Morocco frequencies a week.
The airline also entered into an agreement with One World – one of the biggest global alliances, comprising Latam, Qatar Airways, American Airlines and others. The deal is expected to become effective by the end of H1 2020.
“We have signed it, but now we must integrate the systems, the mileage, the data… It takes time, but by June, everything will probably be connected,” Royal Air Maroc sales manager told ANBA during Abav Expo, a travel industry show taking place until Friday (27) at Expo Center Norte, in São Paulo.
Alruiz said the alliance will add connectivity to stopovers in Brazil and across Latin America. “The company will certainly grow a lot. Clients will get the ease of checking in two 23-kg luggage items and carry one 10-kg handheld item, since the connection flight. For instance, it they depart from Porto Alegre (RS) to take the flight in São Paulo, the luggage will be included in the final, one-off ticket price. That will cut costs for passengers,” he said. The São Paulo-Casablanca flight takes about eight hours.
Morocco
Besides Royal Air Maroc, Morocco’s stand (pictured above), the highlight of Abav Expo, featured 11 Moroccan tour operators and the Casablanca Regional Travel Agencies Association, comprising 15 operators. “We wish to increase stand size and bring even more companies next year,” said Abdellatif Achachi, director-general of Morocco’s Official Tourism Delegation to Brazil and Portugal. “In 2018, we exceeded 53,000 arrivals of Brazilians in Morocco, a 19% increase from 2017,” he said.
In 2011, according to Achachi, there were only 12,000 arrivals. “We nearly quintupled Brazilian tourist numbers in these seven years,” he said. This year, however, the director pointed out an obstacle to growth. “The crisis in Brazil meant less tourism to all destinations, including Morocco, because the dollar and the euro have gained so much. We’ll be glad to see 1% this year,” he claimed.
The director said he has a target of seeing Brazilian tourism to Morocco increase by 15% a year. “For the coming years, the target still stands,” he said.
Apart from the fair, a B2B event was held on the 24th, with 22 Brazilian and 27 Moroccan operators, to further cement Morocco’s position as a destination for the Brazilian industry. “It was a total success. We’d never had an event like this before. Now, with the B2B and the fair, we’re striking up partnerships for next year,” he revealed.
For Achachi, the fair is a great opportunity for Moroccan operators to do business. “The stand is above all a business platform for the operators, to help bring in Brazilian tourists and to do more business. That’s our main goal,” he concluded.
Tunisia
For its first time at Abav Expo, Tunisia participated with an institutional stand of tourism office in Brazil, as well as three Tunisian tourism agencies and a hotel. The chargé d’affaires with the Embassy of Tunisia, Mohamed Amin Sayeb, told ANBA that tourism have a prominent place in the country’s development policy. “Last year was the best one out of the last ten years for tourism in Tunisia, at over 8 million tourists, up 17% from 2017. The country’s population is 11 million people for you to have an idea, and tourism accounts for 7% of the GDP,” he said.
Sayeb and Anissa Ramoundi, Tunis Tourism regional director, listed some of the country’s main attractions, such as beaches; the Sahara desert; Chott el Jerid salt lake; Star Wars film sets in Ong el Jemel, Kairouan mosque, Africa’s largest and oldest mosques; the cities of Cartago and Dougga, UNESCO World Heritage Sites; Djerba island and La Ghriba synagogue, which receives Jewish pilgrimages every May; thalassotherapy, that is, the use of seawater as a form of therapy; and others. “We are Maghreb’s smallest country, but don’t be fooled by our size. Ours is a tiny but great country,” said Sayeb.
One of the agencies at the stand is Gold Experiences, which is based in São Paulo and has an office in Tunis. The company’s founder and CEO Slim Fsili told ANBA that the agency specializes in luxury tourism with land-based packages ranging from USD 2,000 to USD 4,000 including hotels, shuttles, food and tours. “We work with hotels such as Anantara Tozeur, which opened earlier this year, La Badira Hammamet and Four Seasons Tunis, and we want to put Tunisia on the luxury tourism map, as we have everything: a wine route, desert, history, culture, and beaches,” he said.
Tunisian agency Up to Go Travel director general Obbaia Ahmed came to Brazil for the first time to participate in the show. “We want to foster this market. I came here to learn how Brazilian tourism works and understand our potential target audience here and help taking more Brazilians to Tunisia,” he said. “Our country is small but is greatly location, it’s easy to get there. There’s no direct flight, but from Rome it’s a 50-minute flight, from Casablanca a 2-hour flight, and there are many airlines that serve us,” Ahmed said, mentioning Tunis Air, Royal Air Maroc, Air France, Alitalia, Air Europa, Turkish, Lufthansa, Emirates, Qatar, and others.
Silver Tours
A small stand in the show belongs to Silver Tours, an Egyptian tourism agency that specializes in destinations such as Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, and Palestine. “We work on several markets and we are in Brazil to foster this one that is already a market but we expect it to grow, despite the dollar hike,” said the company’s sales director sales director Mohamed Mousa.
Quick facts
Abav International Tourism Expo 2019
September 25 to 27, from noon to 8 pm
Expo Center Norte
Rua José Bernardo Pinto, 333
Vila Guilherme, São Paulo – SP
http://www.abavexpo.com.br/
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum & Guilherme Miranda