Charter Flights From Bucharest to Marsa Alam Planned This Year as 26 Romanian Operators Tour Hurghada

Charter flights are planned from Bucharest to Marsa Alam during this year, and Egypt's tourism authorities have brought 26 senior Romanian tour operators and travel agency executives to Hurghada to sell them the coast, according to Al-Watan and Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The Tourism and Antiquities Ministry, through the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, hosted an event billed as Executive Business Weekend in Hurghada. Al-Watan reported that the charter flights are to be operated by Wizz Air; Al-Masry Al-Youm attributed the plan to the Romanian side without naming a carrier.

The visiting operators were taken round hotels and tourism sites in Hurghada and El Gouna, with a programme covering the beaches, marine activities and desert safari trips the two towns sell, along with the standard of service in their hotels.

Dr Ahmed Youssef, chief executive of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, said the Romanian market is one of the promising ones for Egypt, and that expanding charter flights alongside promotional work with tour operators creates additional scope for arrivals, particularly to Hurghada and Marsa Alam. He gave a presentation on destinations and products that could be pushed harder in Romania, along with state work on tourism infrastructure and hotel capacity.

The authority's delegation included Ahmed Salheen, who heads its Eastern Europe markets unit, and Enas Ahmed of the chief executive's technical office, alongside Romanian and Egyptian private-sector figures.

The reports do not say when the Bucharest flights start, how often they would run, or how many seats they would add.

Romania does not currently appear among Hurghada's largest source markets, which are led by Germany, Russia and Poland. A regular charter link into Marsa Alam would be a new market for the southern end of this coast.