The Tunisia tourism chief has appealed to airlines to add more capacity as the country targets a 50% increase year on year in British visitor numbers in 2023.
Nizar Slimane, general director at the Tunisian National Tourist Office, believes the country was slow to reopen to tourists despite around five million visitors – including 105,000 Britons – travelling to the African country.
To put this into context, five million visitors is around 65% of the total number that came in 2019.
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Slimane hopes to increase British visitor numbers by 50% over the next 12 months.
Slimane (pictured) said: “We hit our target this year. For us our aim was to get to 65% of the numbers in 2019, which was a bumper season for us.
“The [lower numbers] were due to the fact that other countries were quicker to announce that they were reopening.
“The issue is capacity, but there is no reason why we cannot be as competitive as we used to be.
“There are more people who want to go to Tunisia than capacity available.”
Four of the five carriers that offered flights from the UK to Tunisia in 2019 are still flying to the country today. Nouvel Air, Tunisair, easyJet and Tui currently fly between the UK and Tunisia.
However, Slimane added: “We’ve have less airlines flying from the UK to Tunisia but more flights because of Thomas Cook’s collapse.”
He said he believes 2023 will bring a “substantial increase” in capacity and visitor numbers.
“All the tour operators are now looking at Tunisia with more confidence than in the past,” he added. “We’re pretty confident that Brits will respond if we had more capacity.”
Slimane said discussions would start soon with airlines such as Wizz Air and Ryanair about offering flights to Tunisia. “There is interest from these airlines,” he said.
“We can build up again, but it takes time.”