Official Tunisia.com Blog

As I go though the Tunisian media this morning I come to some interesting stories, despite asking a number of times and Tunisia.com being one of the largest websites about Tunisia I am always overlooked and never invited for comment/press conferences about tourism maybe this is my arrogance or maybe the internet is just not yet of any importance in Tunisia.

The talk of the week this week is over the reduction in interest rates and the updates regarding the nations tourism performance for 2008 and looking forward to 2009. Interestingly the first to hit my screen was the news of "Presidential Measures" which is regarded as something of the utmost importance.

The measures announced are as follows,

a) Allocate an additional budget to undertake promotion;

b) Strengthen the international air transport to Tozeur and the domestic air transport to Tabarka and Tozeur;

c) Establish a program to upgrade hotels focus on intangibles, whilst carrying out the modernization of vocational training centers in coordination with all parties involved;

d) To complete the projects and golf courses in a timely manner;

e) Accelerating the use of historic and archaeological and promote large-scale international festivals;

f) Pay more interest in the aesthetics of tourist resorts and the cleanliness of their environment.

Now the above sound important however they also sound a little vague and i look forward to haveing some further details. Additionally (this is my opinion) part of the command economy approach to tourism is also part of the problem. Having now worked in Tunisia for going on a year and spending the majority of my time meeting and talking with tourism professionals as like it or not the most popular topic on Tunisia.com is Tourism I feel that just spending more money is not the key issue, nor is managing of issues that does not address the deeper issues that need to be addressed.

Later on on the same day I read a article about of the tourism ministries review of 2008 and ongoing view toward 2009 (not invited/informed again) where it was made apparent that indeed we will feel some of the impact of the global financial crisis and that we may indeed get less customers than 2009 which is logical. In this press conference the ministry also laid out some plans for investment and action including.

• 40 million dinars (20 million £) for promoting Tunisia.



• upgrading of hotels
  



• obligation on hoteliers to recruit on the basis of training
  



• Promotion of Tunisia

Though the measures announced in this and the Presidential measures are positive I do feel that many tourism professionals shirk their obligations and for a better way of putting it wait for the government to help them. In fact one could almost argue that by helping in many cases government can cause Moral Hazard in this important sector which then enforces the issues that they are working so hard to resolve.

Here are my top issues that I would like to address during this downturn (as downturns are usually the times when the hard decisions are made).

Marketing

Now in Tunisia marketing is a funny term for some it just means advertising as it did years ago in the UK or to others it is like some form of Black art that is designed to take money from people in exchange for something you cannot see and touch. Now the marketing that I am describing is of the following definition which is the standard Marketing Mix approach no doubt in the textbooks of businessmen all around the world since the 1960's.

Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.

I have travelled around Tunisia now for over 3 years stayed in many hotels and come and gone via the airport. I have hardly ever been asked for my opinions nor have many hotels asked me if I enjoyed my stay nor have I never been surveyed for my satisfaction at any stage before, during or after my stay in Tunisia. Also say that I plan to build a hotel/new service how can I get the relevant information, how can improve without this information how can we in Tunisia improve/plan without this information?

Additionally buy giving cheap loans and renovating hotels are we just rewarding those hotels that cannot renovate themselves from their own profits? I understand that 19 hotels closed last year but I also understand that I enquired about a small hotel for sale and was told over 5 million dinars! Which tells me that they are not yet that desperate for money! Maybe the problem is not the hotels themselves but the lack of things to do? maybe the money is better spent there/given to small companies.

Morocco apparently has a public tourism survey and this is something that we need and to make available before we even start planning.

As for the residential tourism product we need to overhaul the buying process and finance process before we even start down this road also are foreign buyers going to by a more expensive house in Tunisia than their home? This needs to be slick, quick and very safe or it will be dead before it even starts.

Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention.

I am always shocked when i here that in Tunisia the average tourist spends about 400$ a week but in Morocco over 800$. We have everything in Tunisia it is fantastic this is why I got my own personal money and invested it in Tunisia.com. I live in Bizerte and I spend over $250 a week so the majority of these folks must literally be staying in the Hotel all inclusive for the entire time!

This must be why we hear so much about renovating the hotels as logically nicer hotels = more expensive = more money but that is not always the case (especially when others do the same). There has been a significant trend for people wanting to go out and about and even have experience holidays where they go and do something outside of just sitting on the beach. We need to embrace this and get people out of the hotels and into the restaurants, festivals, tours etc etc If we persist on just annexing people in zone tourisques they are just going to stay there.

There are so many opportunities out there to increase the spend per tourist however we do have to be realistic example I go to golf courses and the prices are not really that cheap hence the place is empty. I went the hammamet marina and its empty as all the offices cost over 1000 dinars a month (190,000 to buy for 30m2) and only tourist tat shops can pay those rents!!!

Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing. This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.

Considering the above the last thing we need is that the promotion of Tunisia is mostly undertaken by travel agents and they have to live in a hard world and in that world Tunisia is traditionally the cheap all inclusive location which you see on the board outside. The sheer resting on laurels that tourism professionals do in Tunisia is awe inspiring in many cases with many renting their hotels to travel agents or simply telling us that they are not interested in promoting themselves as the travel agent will do all of that for them!! I do not blame the travel agencies at all they have to run their business but when it comes to planning are they going to push Tunisia as a high class destination and go against convention? Or even more dangerously no commissions will = no customers.

There is a yawning gap for self promotion in Tunisia and also collective promotion if this is addressed maybe the hotel associations groups of hotels or even the Tunisian tourism industry itself could develop additional channels to sell directly to the customer and be in control of the image. It is dangerous to be the "cheap" it you are not actually the cheapest go have a look in the window of the travel agents.

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ttp://www.lastminute.com/site/travel/holidays/all-inclusive.html?intcmp=need_ideas_pod1_holidays_all_inc_title_link

Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, branding and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

This is a hot topic at the moment as Tunisia could do so much more but more costs money,ironically if you have the money now is a good time to publicize as costs are dropping in the key target markets. There are also new markets emerging the issue is that with the world in crisis will they actually spend the money and come to Tunisia, however if you believe that things will never get better you may as well shoot yourself :-) It has been shown that companies that invest in raising their brand profiles during recessions come out the other side stronger and this in my opinion what Tunisia should do starting with some market research and ending with a campaign that is bold professional and addresses head on some of the reservations some people have for visiting Tunisia.



Internet
Phew what a rant my final bit is about the internet. The internet was made for Tunisia as it allows the little guy to speak to the world and smart campaigns can get amazing results. It is true to say that someone with a great/savy online publicity campaign can out maneuver big bucks sometimes. It is then sad for me to say that Tunisia is almost like the land that the internet forgot especially for Tunisia's online image of itself.

Nearly all of the travel and tourism information is best found on the sites of individuals and if some people say Tunisia.com then I am happy but really a site like Tunisia.com run mostly out of love should not have more information than the official website. I also notice that different offices have their own websites which is ok but better that they at least have the same style and branding as not to dilute the message.

Casting my eye over google trends it looks like the search volume for Tunisia has seldom increased since 2004/05 which discounting large news and football matches means that online Tunisia is no more popular a search term for the last 4 years. From my perspective this means that Tunisia.com has been able to grab a larger share of the visitors but people have not been motivated to come online and search anew.

At a company level the divides between those that understand online are starting to be evident with folks starting to realize that you can get customers from a website especially when you call them back and or actually answer an email. This is most evident with the foreign (surprise) and younger management who like all over the world use the internet to communicate with their friends and once given the authority and trust in their training from senior management can hopefully make up some of the lost ground on the competition.

Summary

I hope that was not too negative at the end of the day Tunisia is a great place to go its just if we are going to invest more and shake things up lets go for it.

Looking out my widow there is a miserable sight the site of a grey wet day in Bizerte. To be fair the weather has been bad all week and when this happens it feels like everyone is in slow motion as they are in nice weather but without the smile ;-). Bizerte is not really geared up for rain and as such the drains start to flood a bit and the roads become a bit slippery which doesn't seem to register with the taxi drivers who still hurtle around even though their wheels should have been changed some time ago. You could say its a little depressing and i sit here waiting for some sun but then again i could be in the Uk where apparently it has beens snowing a lot so maybe I should be grateful.

I have been on the phone a lot these days to the parents as myself and Hajer have another baby on the way and this time it looks like we will be having her in Bizerte as its not much fun traveling back and forth with Sara especially for Hajer who is now almost 6 months. From what I hear from the parents and from the news which i get on the internet its all doom and gloom back in the UK. Being the bearish sort I felt that we where heading for a recession and this was one of the reasons for coming to Tunisia however I never thought that it would be as bad as it seems with almost everyone impacted in some way. I m now thankful that Hajer started her business as shortly after the pound slid to almost 30% of its value against the tunisian dinar so I was thankful I took my own advice and made sure that I had an income in dinars as well as shifting out of some pounds.

Another thing I did not see was the government giving out taxpayers money to banks, I was always brought up to buy low and sell high which was caused by the feckless causing asset prices (normally businesses and houses) to go to high and thus meaning you could get good value (or even a bargain) when the pendulum swung the other way. However this time it looks like the government is giving out cheap money which if a) is successful it means years of unaffordable/un-rentable house prices and overpriced businesses which will go under as soon as rate go up or indeed a massive recession later when they cannot hold back the tide. So at the moment everyone I know with savings is running about trying to keep them whilst the others who borrowed are sitting waiting to be bailed out.

In terms of Tunisia I get asked by a lot of folks when i think the problems will here and given things are not quite as clear as the UK there is still a lot of nothing to see business as usual. In many ways the techniques used in developed countries to secure banks are already in force in tunisia i.e. the government has stakes in the banks and also have a couple of state run institutions so it can exert influence when it comes to lending and cutting lending. However Tunisia is still in the global economy and it would be naive to assume that growth can surge despite all the problems in the world especially when Tunisia exports a lot also.

My 2 Penny's worth

The Good

• Tunisian banking system tightly monitored and controlled.



• Tunisian government has already implemented some of the actions taken in other countries before the crisis.



• Oil and gas prices have fallen which can help with trade deficit.



• Tunisia never had a moroccan/dubai style development boom.



• The majority of tourists coming from EU and neighboring countries where the dinar is still competitive.



• Tunisia exports a lot of phosphates and food which are tipped to do well.



• There is not as much consumer credit as in other countries.



• The heat will get taken out of the property market.



• Tunisia has a fixed currency.



• Some expat tunisians will come back to Tunisia and start business.

The Bad

• Foreign companies are cutting jobs around the world so maybe some business will restructure in Tunisia.



• Tourism is usually a faller in hard times it will be amazing to get positive numbers in 2009.



• The expat tunisian community may be poorer from the eu recession.



• Even though the dinar is competitive with the Euro many other markets have seen their currencies decline against the dinar and some of these markets where growth markets last year like eastern Europe,russia etc. This makes Tunisia more expansive than last year for them.



• We may see some regression in trade agreements in 2009 from other countries.



• There is a property bubble in Tunisia but this is more of a asking price bubble/new build bubble what i mean is that the margins for builders are there and the sellers of property are sitting on large equity in most cases. There are a lot of loans especially in the commercial sector but since it is almost impossible to buy a house with less than 20% down the market has been driven on low volumes (ie one lot of land sells for 400 a meter then everyone wants 350). Tunisians are stubborn sellers and many are still asking for outlandish prices for land and houses but soon a few forced sellers will trend the price lower lead by developers who have to sell and this is why drops of 15% have already been reported in areas like Nasr which are new build centers. Now logically this is a good thing as high property costs drain money from the productive economy and this is a good thing so bad but good so it is important to be aware of the moral hazard of supporting greedy developers.



• Tunisia has a lot of large projects in the pipeline and maybe some of these will be delayed which we hope not, but is a logical expectation.

No doubt there is lots more things and the odd unexpected event along the way but its going to be a stressful time for many however I am happy to be here than in the UK where the cost of just existing is 13,000£ per year. We will have to see what is going to happen and god willing we will avoid the worst.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=1478

Hello all,

A long time away from the Blog again as I have been back home to the UK for a month or so.

Nothing much has changed in Tunisia which seems the opposite of my feelings when I returned to the UK where all the reasons I left have come to fruition. I had hoped that I would have enjoyed a feeling of schadefrude but unfortunately my feeling of being happy that overpriced houses are coming down and that I may be able to buy a business at a fair value are being replaced by a concern that debt was literally the only thing keeping the show on the road. It is literally all doom and gloom at the moment with my parents telling me that this is bizarre as normally the feckless go to the wall and the prudent get to acquire assets and business and start the rebuilding however this time everybody is being nailed at the same time it seems.

££££?

The £ has bounced up to to 2 dinars this week after what can only be described as a shocking decline. A pound used to get you 2.6 dinars but briefly it went down to 1.9 dinars which makes me thankful that I changed a chunk at 2.3. So if someone tells you Tunisian property went up 30% last year its actually the pound that went down!

So now added to the fact that Tunisian house prices are overinflated (and reportedly falling in Nasr already) I additionally have a lot less to spend so that is on hold now whilst I enjoy renting my nice house which is much more relaxing!

Tunisia.com

In terms of the site itself we have changed the lout a bit over the last few weeks to improve the advertising layout and added some features in the back-end to try and make things faster. We are also hoping to have a new forum layout later this week which should improve the experience further.

In terms of content we have started to add information to the recipe section (culture) and i have the travel guide for Nabeul up there with sousse medina and Monastir on their way for later in the month.

We also be looking at launching another forum (in french) for Bizerte.com which is parked at the moment. The reason for not developing the site so far was that we where waiting for the development for the marina to start but its Jan so better that we press ahead :-)

So steady as she goes and I with everyone a good start to 2009

Hi all!

This week I am back in the office after spending last week in sousse. It was a good week where myself and Ramzi got a lot done including some new photos of the centre of sousse and the port to refresh the travel guides. We also managed to have a nice meeting with the folks of El Mouradi Hotels whom came across as a very dynamic and professional company and it is always nice to meet the people behind some of the hotels and logos that you see driving passed on the sides of buses and land-cruisers in many parts of Tunisia. El Mouradi and many other leading tourism companies from Tunisia are currently exhibiting in the WTM exhibition in the Excel Centre in London.

http://www.wtmlondon.com/

I wish all of the folks success during the event where many of them are sharing a stand with the Tunisian National tourism office (www.cometotunisia.co.uk) I have had the pleasure of meeting many of the companies in my few months in Tunisia and if anyone is visiting the show please feel free to say hello! Also say where is Tunisia.com!

Over this next week I am trying to sort out meetings with more hotel companies (it is the marketing season for them) and also trying to get down to the sales offices of Tunis Sports City and Sama Dubai as I am getting asked all the time for some articles/photos of these mega projects. Then I am thinking about going home for a couple of weeks to blighty to see the folks and show sara the motherland which is going to cost me a fortune especially as Hajer apparently needs another wife visa as we work outside the UK which is another 1200 dinars!!

Website wise I should be adding updated content for Nabuel, Soussse, PEK and Utique over the next week or so which I hope that you will enjoy and will make you want to go and visit :-). Following the design update of a couple of weeks ago we are also continuing to tighten up the design of the things to do sections and tweaking the little issues as we find them.

One of my biggest issues at the moment is populating the events section which I have high hopes for but it is difficult to get specific information about events in a suitable time frame, even in the newspapers here it will say massive event on monday next week (too late for foreign visitors) Tunis (huge city) and will play host to x and y (no schedule). Such bad marketing and PR is the bane of many events in Tunisia for example excellent products such as the Bizerte festival where never confirmed to me and I only got heed when a speaker truck drove passed telling me that it was to start tomorrow. I would also be a rich man if I got a dinar for every-time I drove passed a poster in hammamet which gave details of a concert that I would have liked to go to but was last week. I am a firm believer that adding value for tourists via the provision of festivals and events is a key differentiator from other destinations but we need to allow those visitors to plan to come for another example http://www.tabarkajazz.com has 2007 on it! and believe me this is an excellent event!

end of moan

All things considered a good week thanks be to god! Most importantly my little Sara is coming along nicely.

She is now 1.4 years old and runs about and is now starting to speak,well make word sounding noises. I try to speak english to her all the time and at the moment she has the following Vocab.

Tunisian Arabic (spelt phonetically),

Speaks

Shoof (show)

Haka (look)

Hub Hub (woof woof)

Hee Jar (Hajer=MUM)

Hazeezhi (aziz = dad and grandfather)

Aye (slang yes)

Baba (which I thought was me but it turns out is almost everything)

Understands all of the above +

Atini (give)

im shee (get going)

Lea (no)

Yerkut (stop moving)

Coul (eat)

Zeaza (titties/boobies) for culinary reasons

Hajer gives up chasing Sara!

.......................................

English

Speaks

No!

Dad Dad Dad

Daddie

Mum Mum

Cat

Understands above +

Thank you

you look lovely

Go drive the car (takes keys and runs to car, puts key in ignition= dangerous)

Karen (my mum)

TV

Sit

I am gonna get you (runs away)

Teletubbies

Hey my name is Iggle Piggle (in the night garden is addictive as crack for under 5s)

So far the only issue I have with Sara is (as warned by my mother) is that having a baby is experiencing stress like you have never felt before and you sit there just looking at them, someone that needs you for everything. She is growing so fast that I just cannot believe that I am her dad and that it was only July 30th last year I had no daughter at all!

Hi All,

So busy at the moment as it comes to the end of our Tunisian offices first year in operation.

We have been working over the last few weeks to get the new design completed along with the new Tunisieimmo.com website which we hope will be popular.

The new design though not dramatically different should be faster more simple to navigate and also has the useful new feature of an event calendar which (if I can get the "marketing" managers to tell me) will have the latest events happening in Tunisia.

On the customer front we have been meeting people in Hammamet October and will be heading down to Sousse next week to meet people down there.

Aside from these things no complaints the weather is getting a little colder now and i should be going back to the UK to se the folks. I envisaged coming back every six months but to be honest at the moment I am enjoying life so much why bother! I remember the last time that I returned to the UK from Tunisia and drove back to Norwich from Gatwick 40 quid for diesel for the Mini and then I went to a coffee machine that wanted to charge me nearly £3 for a coffee yes a machine!!!! I guess also now that its been over 10 months since i returned these prices are even higher!

Congratulations to Oussama Mellouli who dug in when it counted to beat the legendary Grant Hackett over the 1500 meters swim in the games.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajacied/2770445601/sizes/o/

In what is a tough event Oussama beat the odds and delivered the first gold for over 40 years!

Everyone on the Tunisia.com staff and forum wish Oussama all the best and thank him for his hard work. We also look forward to his return which I am sure will be treated as the return of a hero!