The latest figures on Tunisian tourism call for mixed feelings: on the one hand, the number of visitors exceeds the record of 2019, but on the other, there are the prices of hotel rooms, which are inaccessible to most domestic travelers, especially during the summer.
During the last month, the prices of restaurant and hotel services increased by 1%, following the increase of 1% in the prices of restaurant and café services and 1.2% in hotel services. Some hotels charge over 500 dinars (about 150 EUR) per night.
Experts point out that there was a time when tourism in Tunisia was practically reserved for foreign visitors, whose purchasing power was much higher than that of Tunisians. And that's still the case today.
The President of the Tunisian Federation of Travel and Tourism Agencies (FTAV) stresses that this is an international trend following the recovery of tourism after two years marked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In other words, the current upturn benefits the economy but not Tunisian domestic travelers.
Despite the challenges, the improvement of tourism has brought some positive results. In the first five months of 2023, Tunisian tourism generated foreign exchange earnings of 1.717 billion dinars (about 500 million EUR), which shows an increase of 57.8% compared to 2022 and 4.9% compared to 2019, which serves as the base year.