S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 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\u2019s 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 S\u00e3o 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 Eg\u00edpcia Tours, a tour operator with three units in the city. <\/p>\n
The company sets up travel packages, mostly to the Middle East, and sells them to travel agencies. Eg\u00edpcia 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. \u201cBrazil is a fertile market, it\u2019s new to the world, competition around here is not that fierce yet, there are few companies for so many tourists,\u201d says the Egyptian.<\/p>\n
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 S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 do Rio Preto, Santo Andr\u00e9, Curitiba, Chapec\u00f3, Joinvile, Santos and Foz do Igua\u00e7u, as well as other S\u00e3o Paulo neighbourhoods such as Tatuap\u00e9 and Santana. The three units he has are in Brooklin, Morumbi and the Centre. \u201cI 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,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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 Cracol\u00e2ndia [a crack-infested neighbourhood], in the Centre of S\u00e3o 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 Eg\u00edpcia Tours grow. <\/p>\n
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 Eg\u00edpcia 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. <\/p>\n
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. \u201cI 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,\u201d he says. From now on he will travel to the Middle East as an entrepreneur. Next year, Eg\u00edpcia will participate in several international fairs, including one in Dubai.<\/p>\n
Contact<\/b>:<\/p>\n
Eg\u00edpcia Tours
Telephone: +55 11 3729-0793
Website: www.egipciatours.com
Email: reservas@egipciatours.com<\/p>\n
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mohammed Youssef Darwich opened tour operator Eg\u00edpcia Tours in S\u00e3o Paulo in 2007. The company, whose main focus is packages to the Middle East, already has three units.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1455,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tourism"},"wps_subtitle":"Mohammed Youssef Darwich opened tour operator Eg\u00edpcia Tours in S\u00e3o Paulo in 2007. The company, whose main focus is packages to the Middle East, already has three units.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}