Tourism Ministry announces int'l marketing and promotion partnerships

CAIRO - 10 September 2019: Minister of Tourism Rania Al-Mashat announced Monday the details of the Ministry's International Marketing and Promotion Partnerships with major international marketing, branding and media companies namely Beautiful Destinations, CNN, China’s Ctrip, Discovery, Expedia Group and Isobar.

Across an innovative mix of TV, digital and social media platforms, the Ministry of Tourism is launching a global tourism campaign to showcase the modern and dynamic face of the country with its abundance of experiences for travelers from all around the world, whatever their taste or budget, in addition to tapping on new source markets.

“The diversification of marketing and media platforms, a key pillar of the Egypt—Tourism Reform Program, contributes to the changing narrative of the sector.” said H.E. Dr Rania Al-Mashat.


Ministry of Tourism announces International Marketing and Promotion Partnerships with Beautiful Destinations, CNN, Ctrip, Discovery, Expedia Group and Isobar - Press photo

“We will work closely with our international partners to showcase our beautiful country to a wider range of audiences all over the world, with new innovative and competitive concepts of promotion, modern content and digital tools, highlighting the diversity of our destinations & authenticity of our traditions. And through the use of a data-driven approach we will create content tailored to audiences in various markets” added Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, the Minister of Tourism.

At the heart of the Ministry's International Marketing and Promotion Partnerships lie the three main components of the third pillar of the Egypt—Tourism Reform Program. They are “GEM2020”, promoting the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest museum in the world dedicated to one civilization; “People to People” (P2P) campaign, which aims at portraying Egypt not only as a contemporary and prime touristic destination but also sheds light on the diversity and authenticity of the Egyptian people and “Branding by Destination”, creating an identity for each of Egypt’s unique destinations.

The announcement ceremony was attended by Jeremy Jauncey , Founder and CEO of Beautiful Destination, Ms. Amanda Wang; GM of Global Destinations Marketing & Sales in Ctirp Group, Amanda Turnbull; Discovery Vice President and General Manager for Middle East & Africa, Myriam Younes; Director, Business Development, EMEA & India, Expedia Group, Tarek Daouk ; CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network MENA “Isobar”.

Jeremy Jauncey founder and CEO of Beautiful Destinations said “Working with H.E. Dr. Rania Al Mashat to bring the Egypt — Tourism Reform Program to life has been a huge honour and we are extremely proud to have created the new brand for Egypt tourism.

The launch of the People to People campaign is just the start of Beautiful Destinations commitment to Egypt and we cannot wait to inspire the world to come and visit”.

He added “We have been working together since the beginning of the year on a close partnership to develop the Egypt brand, data from target markets and the Beautiful Destinations community on social media. We have seen a fantastic response from travellers and content creators all over the world who are excited to visit Egypt and see all it has to offer. At a time when authentic, local experiences are driving so much of tourism we believe that Egypt is exceptionally well positioned to capitalise in this interests l and create once in a lifetime moments for people from all over the world”.


Ministry of Tourism announces International Marketing and Promotion Partnerships with Beautiful Destinations, CNN, Ctrip, Discovery, Expedia Group and Isobar - Press photo

Cathy Ibal, Vice President, CNN International Commercial said “It excites me when we evolve a long-term relationship with a key partner into new and innovative areas. This new partnership takes our nation branding work with Egypt Ministry of Tourism to a new level by leveraging the cumulative impact of all CNN platforms, content and technology to ensure that the beauty of Egypt and its people resonates deeply with the right audiences”, during the launch of the partnership with CNN on May 7, 2019.

Amanda Wang; GM of Global Destinations Marketing & Sales in Ctirp Group said “During the past several years, we saw significant growth in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Egypt. It is an attractive destination with the abundant tourism resource and characteristic culture, and the visa on arrival policy helped with market increase as well. Cairo was the most popular African city for Chinese tourists last year. Ctrip Destination Marketing will work closely with Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board, provide Chinese visitors with more rich and unique travel products”.

Commenting on the partnership, Amanda Turnbull; Discovery Vice President and General Manager for Middle East & Africa said: “We are delighted to further strengthen our long-standing relationship with Egypt Tourism as its only non-news network partner. Our expertise allows us to showcase the many wonders of Egypt as part of our unprecedented factual entertainment offering, as well as communicate the breadth of historical and tourism offerings across Egypt to far-reaching corners of the globe”.

Myriam Younes, Director, Business Development at Expedia Group Media Solutions: “Egypt has so much to offer visitors and we are thrilled to be working with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism to help meet the goals of its ambitious tourism program. This campaign aims to drive demand in bookings, but more perhaps importantly, it will help raise awareness of Egypt’s amazing regions and diverse people to Expedia Group’s audience of highly engaged, international travel shoppers. We look forward to seeing some positive results from the campaign”.

Tarek Daouk ; CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network MENA “Isobar”, said: “We are extremely proud to partner with Egypt Tourism on their social content, experiential and digital media assignment around the globe. Travelers today demand seamless end-to-end experiences, seeking content that inspires them and experiences that provide motivation to travel based on a desire for social connections, adventure and spontaneity”. He added “We look forward to working together to capture the hearts and minds of the world’s explorers looking for their next journey”.

Below are the international branding and media companies:

1- Beautiful Destinations

It is the global travel brand dedicated to showcase the good in the world through the power of travel; It has built the world’s largest tourism community on social media; Over 20 million people in 180 countries turn to us daily on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and Weibo to be inspired by travel and tourism, and to learn more about our partners.
Through this partnership, Beautiful Destinations, will create unique, high impact videos and a photo library to showcase Egypt through storytelling.
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2- CNN

In May 2019, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism is embarked on an expanded partnership with CNN in a global tourism campaign that showcases a contemporary Egypt across an innovative mix of TV, digital and social media platforms. The objective of the partnership is to continue and accelerate the country’s tourism growth. Innovation lies at the heart of the partnership through the utilisation of CNN’s sophisticated data capabilities and insight to reach these audiences. CNN will leverage its unique scale via TV networks as well as precision targeting across digital and social media to optimise a brand campaign showing the beauty of Egypt, its culture and people across these platforms as TV adverts, native advertising and targeted social media posts using Turner’s Launchpad technology.

CNN’s continued commitment to covering diverse stories about global destinations will continue with a range of truly inspirational CNN digital and TV programming about Egypt such as Destination Egypt, which will explore some of the country’s wonders in a new light; #MyEgypt, which will discover Egypt through a seasoned traveller with insider knowledge of the country; and Cairo POV, which looks at how millennial travellers uncover local experiences on their adventures.

3- Ctrip

Ctrip is one of the largest Chinese online tour operators. Since its inception in 1999, Ctrip has experienced substantial growth and became one of the best-known travel brands in China; it is a leading travel service provider of accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management in China.
Ctrip enables business and leisure travelers to make informed and cost-effective bookings by aggregating comprehensive travel related information and offering its services through an advanced transaction and service platform consisting of its mobile apps, Internet websites and centralized, toll-free, 24-hour customer service center.
Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Ctrip will launch a joint marketing campaign to promote Egypt in the Chinese market. This campaign marks the start of a partnership aimed at connecting Chinese travelers to Egypt; through this cooperation, Ctrip along with Ministry of Tourism will carry out a digital campaign with online advertising and precise targeting solutions. The aim is to provide travelers with holistic top-quality products and services.

Through this partnership, a number of promotional activities will be carried out during the coming months, including the implementation of a joint promotion campaign on the most important touristic sites and specialized social networking sites in China, especially the search sites, ctrip.com, Wechat Baidu, as well as an advertising campaign on the page dedicated to touristic destinations.

4- Discovery

It is the global leader in real life entertainment with 53 network brands reaching over 3 billion subscribers in 224 countries and is renowned for its award winning programs.
The partnership of the Ministry of Tourism with Discovery uses Discovery’s global network (Discovery Channel-TLC - Travel Channel – Discovery online portfolio ) with specific campaigns in Asia, China, Middle East ,Europe,Latin America and USA.

The new partnership includes the implementation of a campaign to produce promotional content for Egyptian tourism globally, where Discovery will produce advertising and digital content for Discovery Channel, TLC and Travel Channel across Sweden, Denmark, Finland, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Middle East North Africa, South Eastern Europe, Russia, India, South East Asia, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, USA.
This partnership aims at showcasing the beauty of the country through its diverse destinations “Branding by Destination” and showcasing warmth and hospitality of its people “People to People”; through creating and distributing creative content about the charming destinations of Egypt.

Discovery will prepare a series of episodes about Marsa Alam and a promotional movie about Siwa and the white desert and it will depict and produce short movie about the Egyptian Grand Museum “GEM” just before the opening to the public, “Dawn of GEM”

5- Expedia

It is one of the world's leading online travel and booking brands, which is visited by around 6 million people worldwide every month. The company collaborates with the world's leading brands to provide increased demand services and direct bookings.

Through the new partnership between Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Expedia a campaign will be launched to promote Egypt in 5 different touristic markets, the USA, UK ,Canada, Italy and Germany. This campaign will run for 12-months based on the seasonal search and booking system for travel in these markets.

It includes adding custom landing pages, featuring bespoke guides and beautiful rich media content, along with a host of new digital advertising formats. Designed to increase booking demand and raise the profile of Egypt in key international markets, the 2019 campaign will run across 11 Expedia Group websites in five countries, namely Canada, Germany, Italy, UK, and USA.

Campaign messaging focuses on increasing awareness of Egypt, helping raise the country is various tourism destinations and shedding light on the diversity of the Egyptian people. Messaging will also offer an opportunity to promote key cultural events such as the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum 'GEM2020,' one of the largest museums in the world.

6- ISOBAR

It is the creative experience arm of Dentsu Aegis Network and a global digital agency transforming businesses and brands through the creative use of digital.
It has 6,500 digital experts in 85 locations across 45 markets in Americas, EMEA and APAC, who deliver experience-led transformation, powered by creativity through service offering.

The company will implement an international strategy to promote Egypt on social media, in addition to creating digital promotional content.

Isobar has been selected as the digital agency of record for the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board (ETPB) and will be driving digital strength and brand loyalty via a bespoke international social, content, experiential and digital media strategy across seventeen key markets.

Through this partnership Isobar will continue to help accelerate the country’s tourism growth by delivering personalised experiences and it will use a data-driven approach to create, distribute, measure and optimise content tailored to local audiences that showcases the beauty, hospitality and adventure to be found in Egypt.