Tourism authorities in Tunisia have repeated their call for suppliers not to slash prices to draw visitors back to the country following the revolution in January.
But their stance has been challenged by UK tour operators, in particular Thomas Cook – who led the return to Tunisia this week with four flights from the UK on Wednesday.
Mohamed Naceur Laribi, Tunisian Office of Tourism regional commissioner for Nabeul and Hammamet, said: “A policy to cut prices is not good for us, not good for hotels, not good for tour operators. It will affect the quality of services in hotels.
“If we cut prices now it will be harder to come back to the same price or make prices higher in future. It would be better to keep the same prices and to improve the quality in hotels. The tourism ministry message is not to cut prices.”
However, Thomas Cook mainstream tour operations head of destination Mark Littlefair said: “That is a difficult ask for summer 2011. We must see this summer as a special case. It will be 2012 before we get back to normal.”
Speaking in Hammamet, Littlefair said: “We can keep prices as they are, and even push prices up a bit, but we must see quality improve first.”
Laribi disagreed, saying: “We don’t have the same vision. Tunisia suffered after 2001 when prices were cut. We suffered until 2006. We prefer to see tourists happy with the quality not the price.”
He added: “The last three months hoteliers have been really suffering. We don’t see how hotels can cut prices. We can’t cut prices and improve quality. So cutting for summer – ‘no’. But if cuts are to push sales for a short period, OK.”
In reality, prices have been slashed for immediate departures despite the official policy and industry analyst GfK Ascent reports the average sales price to Tunisia for this summer down about £80 on last year.
Littlefair said: “We missed six weeks of the key booking period so we are playing catch up. We have significant support from suppliers.”