Tunisia tourism achieves fresh leap: official

Under the patronage of Minister of Tourism and Handicrafts Rene Trabelsi, the Tunisian National Tourism Office (ONTT) and the Marketing Communication Media Agency (MCM) organized Wednesday a conference under the theme "Cultural Tourism: What needs to be changed."

Speaking at the opening session, the minister said that 8.3 million tourists have visited Tunisia since the beginning of the year until Nov. 20.

"While waiting to reach our goal of 9 million tourists by the end of the year, we intend to take all necessary measures to boost cultural tourism in 2020," he added.

Trabelsi regretted that there are "unfortunately" important sites that are not recommended to visit, given their condition.

"The new visitor profile is no longer interested only in seaside tourism. They want to explore the country's culture and heritage, in which Tunisia is rich," he said.

Trabelsi said that funding exists to boost cultural tourism, recalling that recently the U.S. embassy in Tunisia has allocated a budget of about 500,000 dollars for the restoration of the archaeological site of El Jem besides funding from the European Union (EU) and the German Cooperation Agency (GIZ) for the restoration of other sites.

He also called on tour operators and travel agencies to include cultural tours in their excursions, noting cultural tourism can play an important role, especially during the low season.

Tunisia's tourism exceeded 1.7 billion U.S. dollars until Nov. 20, 2019, with an increase of 38.3 percent compared with the previous year.