Tourism in Tunisia recorded a clear rebound in 2023 with 8.8 million visitors, up 49.3% in one year, and is on track to surpass a record reached in 2019, before the Covid pandemic.
“Our objective was to recover 80% of the tourist flows recorded in 2019”, a record year for the last decade, Aymen Rahmani, director of studies and cooperation at the Tunisian National Tourism Office (ONTT), told AFP. ). As of December 10, 2023, “Tunisia has exceeded this objective,” he noted, with 8.8 million visitors compared to 8.7 million over the same period in 2019. “If we maintain the same trend from here at the end of 2023, we will reach 9.6 million visitors,” underlined Mr. Rahmani.
As of December 10, 2023, turnover amounts to 6.7 billion dinars (around 2 billion euros). “This is an exceptional figure,” Mr. Rahmani declared to the same source, estimating that revenues of 6.9 billion dinars are possible by the end of 2023.
According to Mr. Rahmani, the main visitors were Algerians (2.7 million), followed by Libyans (2.1 million), who do not necessarily frequent hotels, and the French (+14.6% with 974,000 tourists).
The sector was already recovering in 2022 when Tunisia had recovered 68% of the 2019 tourist flow.
According to the World Bank (WB), the rebound allowed Tunisia, 80% indebted, to partially rebalance its current deficit, thanks to increased inflows of foreign currencies, against a backdrop of very weak growth (+1.2% forecast by the WB for 2023).
The main reason given for the economic slowdown is that the drought that has hit Tunisia since the start of the year has reduced production in the country’s important agricultural sector, while the war in Ukraine has increased its grain imports ( food and fodder) and energy, on which it is highly dependent.
Over the past decade, tourism, which accounts for 9% of GDP, was hit by the revolution that toppled dictator Ben Ali in 2011, followed by terrorist attacks that killed nearly 60 tourists in 2015 at the Museum of the Bardo in Tunis and the seaside resort of Sousse (east-central Tunisia).
