Tunisia Tourism

Tunisia is mostly known for its mass-market packaged tourism; however, as the number of European arrivals continues to decline, the coming years will see Tunisia’s luxury hotels undergo a growth spurt as more international chains take over existing hotels and build new properties to attract upmarket travellers.

How important is tourism to the economy, and what actions has the Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts taken to hasten the recovery of the sector?

The previous years have been marked by highs and lows for many countries in the MENA region. The Tunisian tourism industry, however, has begun showing small signs of recovery following a sharp drop in international arrivals in the aftermath of two acts of terrorism – one at the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March 2015 and another at a Sousse resort...

Tunisia’s 2015 season was marked by an unfortunate series of attacks targeting tourists at the Bardo Museum and the Imperial Marhaba, a Sousse beach-side resort. Such events, coupled with the neighbouring political and security crisis in Libya, caused a decrease in international tourism for the rest of the 2015 season and a slow recovery for...

Around two-thirds of Tunisia’s air traffic is generated by tourist arrivals, which means the aviation sector tends to be heavily impacted by the ebbs and flows of visitor numbers. For instance, in the first half of 2015 – following a pair of terrorist incidents in popular tourist areas – the number of travellers across Tunisian airports fell...

Prior to the 2011 revolution, political stability and low-cost all-inclusive packaged holidays turned Tunisia into a safe, affordable and sunny destination for holidaymakers. But, while it ensured regular tourist flows to the country every year, their numbers only evolved by 2m in the decade leading to 2010, increasing from 5m to just 7m,...