Meetings planners turn to North Africa

Competative prices and high quality venues offer alternative to expensive Gulf countries.

North Africa is becoming an increasingly popular destination for Middle East meetings planners, according to travel management firm BCD Travel.

"There is now a tendency to move out of the region to Egyptian and Moroccan destinations," said Paul Tracy, vice president, growth and emerging markets, BCD Travel.

"Compared with Dubai, the hotel pricing is more aggressive and the quality is there.

The company has partners throughout the Gulf, Egypt and Jordan, putting BCD in a strong position to observe meetings industry trends across the region, he added.

Tracy said the Middle East was becoming a "critical" market for BCD Travel.

"A lot of attention has been focused in the last year on the so called BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China) but when you look at the GDP, growth and exports of the Gulf as a whole it is larger than all of these countries except for China," he said.

BCD is now present across eight countries in the region; Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the company plans to expand into Yemen to in the near future, Tracy added.

All of BCD's regional offices offer destination management and inbound services, while the Oman and Egypt offices have professional congress organiser (PCO) divisions; the Qatar and Egypt offices manage and organise exhibitions and the Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain offices operate incentives programmes for their clients.

BCD recently appointed a strategic development manager - Rehan Ali - to oversee the growth of the region from the company's hub in Dubai.

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