Kefalogianni discusses tourism and air links with Brazil and Egypt

Greece’s Tourism Minister, Olga Kefalogianni, held a meeting in Athens on Thursday with Egypt’s ambassador to Greece, Mourad Y. Mourad, and with the secretary general of the Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO), Andreas Fiorentinos, at the centre of which were strengthening tourism cooperation and expanding air links with Egypt and Brazil, as Greek Travel Pages reports.

According to the report, the meeting comes at a time when Athens is actively working to expand its tourism markets beyond Europe. Only a few days earlier, Kefalogianni held similar talks with Japan on direct flights between Athens and Tokyo, as well as with Israel’s new ambassador to Greece on deepening tourism cooperation between the two countries.

With Egypt, air links have expanded considerably recently: Aegean Airlines has launched the direct Thessaloniki–Cairo route, while the Egyptian company Air Cairo has opened the Alexandria–Athens route, which operates twice a week. Brazil, meanwhile, is seen as a growing market for Greek tourism.

The Tourism Ministry’s strategy is to turn Greece into one of the world’s leading destinations, with a focus on quality, sustainability and spreading the benefits of tourism to all regions of the country — an approach the Greek government has presented as the sector’s new “roadmap” for the years ahead.