Austria: Arab tourists flock to Austria

Tourists from Arab nations are increasingly developing a fancy for Austria, the new figures of the Austrian Tourist Board show.

According to Klaus Ehrenbrandtner, Market Manager for the Middle East of the tourist board in Dubai, the number of tourists to Austria from the region surged by 21 % between January and August to 91,600, which resulted in 330,800 overnight hotel stays.

"This numbers made up for the decrease in 2009," Ehrenbrandtner told Gulf News. In 2009, visitor numbers fell 4.9 % and overnight stays by 9.4 %. However, the reason for this was not the world financial crisis, but the discussion about a new swine flu pandemic," he said, which hit Europe in April 2009. "We had a lot of cancellations."

In recent years, tourism from Arab nations to Austria increased by 10 to 12 % annually, Ehrenbrandtner said.

Since 2004, Arab visitors grew by 125 %, and overnight hotel stays by 100 %.

"This means we are one of the strongest growing markets for tourists from Arab nations, besides Malta and the CIS nations."

On the other hand, Arab tourists account for the third major group of overseas tourists, behind Americans and Japanese. Most of them came from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait.

"Our records show that Arab tourists spend about double the amount than the average tourist on hotel stays in Austria," Ehrenbrandtner said. "Seventy % of them are staying in four- or five-star hotels only."

"Particularly those destin-ations that are completely new in the market have shown a fantastic result," Charlotte Newby the Austrian Tourist Board's marketing manager, added.

"The province of Tirol gained 38 % in overnight stays. The fact that these destinations have been prominently displayed in the recent catalogues of Emirates Holidays and other large tour operators has definitely helped."

Campaign

However, Austria's capital Vienna remained the number one destination for Arab tourists with a 20.5 % increase in overnight stays from January to August.

"We had a Vienna campaign running on Orbit Showcase Network during Ramadan and will start a radio campaign on Emarat FM and Radio 2 in late October. There are as well a couple of travel documentaries that were filmed during summer in Vienna and will be aired on Arabic TV stations in October and November," said Ehrenbrandtner.

"Furthermore we will start a joint campaign with the Vienna Tourist Board and Wataniya Airways on October 21 in Kuwait to promote the direct flight to Vienna from Kuwait." Wataniya offers direct flights from Kuwait to Vienna.