influences on the german tourist‘s perception of egypt‘s

Branding Cairo (un)intended

Influences on the German tourist‘s perceptionof Egypt‘s capital

Branding Cairo (un)intended

Influences on the German tourist‘s perceptionof Egypt‘s capital

A Thesis submitted in the Partial Fulfillment for the Requirement of the Degree of Master of Science in Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design

by Gregor Schopf

Supervized by:

Prof. Dr. M. Tamer El Khorazaty

Professor of Urban Planning and Design

Ain Shams University

Prof. Dr. Astrid Ley

Professor for International Urbanism

University of Stuttgart

Dr. Mona Helmy

Adjunct Professor at University of Stuttgart

Assistant Professor at Dar Al-Hekma University, Jeddah, KSA

Disclaimer

This dissertation is submitted to Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering and University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning for the degree of Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design. The work included in this thesis was carried out by the author in the Year 2015. The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.

07/27/2015

Gregor Schopf

Signature

Acknowledgements

For support big and small I am very thankful. I want to express my gratitude to:

Paula Seidel, my whole family, classmates and KNICK Design

The thesis‘ supervisors for their enriching input and feedback: Prof. Dr. Tamer el Khorazaty Prof. Dr. Astrid Ley Dr. Mona Helmy

The whole master program‘s team of University of Stuttgart and Ain Shams University in Cairo for their academic and organisational work: Prof. Antje Stockmann Prof. Dr. Mohammed Salheen Dr. Marwa Abdelatif Raoul Humpert & Franziska Laue

The thesis‘ interview partners for providing valuable information: Bernd Erbel, Deutscher Botschafter in Ägypten a. D. Christian Mehnert, Deutsches Wissenschaftzentrum Cairo Olaf Collet, Deutscher Reiseverband Prof. Dr. Hesham el Raffei, Helwan University Cairo Sofian Naceur, Journalist

The German Exchange Service (DAAD) for providing the great opportunity to experience the double masters program.

The people of Egypt for their welcoming hospitality.

Abstract

Nowadays places face the urgent need to brand themselves in order to compete with other places for talent, labour, investment, experts or tourists. Egypt is a country that relies strongly on tourism, since it represents one of the most im-portant sectors of economy for the country. Consequently, ambitious attention is paid to the branding of the place for tourism.Unfortunately, the recent political crisis harmed the tourism heavily and caused a severe decline in visitor numbers. Obviously, the brand of Egypt and Cairo was weakened by the complex incidents. This research focusses on the official brand-ing of Cairo, and highlights the additional aspects contributing to the brand. Al-though these aspects become part of the place brand, they are free of any brand-ing intention – the unintended branding influences are an important drive and a critical dimension for any place brand. Egypt’s and Cairo’s brand seems to have been affected negatively by them, which causes the need to be aware of it.

Keywords:Place branding, tourism promotion, unintended influences on branding,brand awareness

List of content

Listoftablesandfigures 12

Introduction 17 Methodology 19

Limitations 22

1. Placebranding-ageneraldiscourse 251.1. Literature review 25

1.1.1. Brand and Branding 26

1.1.2. Differentiation between product brand and types of place brands 27

1.1.3. Tourism as dimension of place branding 30

1.1.4. Place branding: between identity, image, perception and reputation 32

1.1.5. Branding – intended and unintended 34

2. BrandingCairo 392.1. The Brand of Cairo – the brand of Egypt? 39

2.2. Tourism in Egypt 44

2.2.1. Cairo's tourism 49

2.2.2. German tourists in Egypt 50

2.3. Branding Cairo for tourism 57

2.3.1. The official promotion through “Egypt travel” 58

2.3.2. Summarizing Cairo’s officially promoted tourism place brand identity 83

2.3.2. Other actor's imaging of Cairo 86

2.4. Unintended influences - a critical dimension for place brands 89

2.4.1. Word of mouth / word of mouse 89

2.4.2. The media depiction 91

2.4.3. Public Diplomacy 96

2.5. Chapter‘s conclusion 99

3. Brandawareness-surveys 1053.1. Analysing the surveys 107

3.2. Perceived Brand Identity 127

3.2.1. The channels of the brand 130

3.3. Chapter‘s conclusion 132

4. SWOT&recommendations 1354.1. Strengths and weaknesses 135

4.2. SWOT Analysis 138

4.3. Recommendations 140

4.3.1. Creating a holistic branding approach 140

4.3.2. Learning from best practice 143

Conclusion 153

Bibliography 158

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Listoftablesandfigures

Table 2.01 Strongest actors in the German tourism industry and their offerings regarding Egypt 54

Table 2.02 Small actors in the German tourism industry with specialisation on Egypt 55

Table 2.03 Portrayed sights in the website egypt.travel.de 62

Table 2.04 Mentioned aspects in the website egypt.travel.de 63

Table 2.05 Video-content-analysis 69

Table 2.06 Video-content-analysis categorisation 73

Table 2.07 Sample check of Egypt‘s depiction in Germany‘s strongest online news 97

Figure 0.1 Brand communcation and positioning strategy 23

Figure 1.1 Brand communcation and positioning strategy -areas of intended and unintended creation 37

Figure 2.1 Camels, the desert and the Pyramids of Giza - Symbols of Egypt? 39

Figure 2.2 Brand Hexagon 42

Figure 2.3 Relation of the economic meaning of the two main tourism products and vision of shift 48

Figure 2.4 The Sphinx of Giza 49

Figure 2.7 Hotel in Hurghada 49

Figure 2.5 The Citadell of Saladin 49

Figure 2.8 Diving in Hurghada 49

Figure 2.6 Coptic Church in Cairo 49

Figure 2.9 Beach in Hurghada 49

Figure 2.10 Official Logo of egypt.travel 58

Figure 2.11 Map of Cairo published by egypt.travel 64

Figure 2.12 View from the Cairo-tower 75

Figure 2.13 Interactive panorama - Citadel of Saladin 76

Figure 2.14 Interactive panorama - Moaiz street 77

Figure 2.15 Interactive panorama - inside the Al Azhar park 78

Figure 2.16 Interactive panorama - Bridge over the Nile 79

Figure 2.17 Interactive panorama - Pyramids of Giza 80

Figure 2.17.2 Image from video- nightlife 81

Figure 2.18 Image from video- hospitality 82

Figure 2.19 Image from video- shopping 83

Figure 2.20 Image from video- story-telling 84

Figure 2.21 Brand communcation and positioning strategy of egypt.travel 87

Figure 2.22 ETI‘s start-web-page 88

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Figure 2.23 erlebe Ägypten & Jordanien‘s start-web-page 88

Figure 2.24 Egypt-pur‘s start-web-page 89

Figure 2.25 Helios reisen‘s start-web-page 89

Figure 2.26 Halloreisen‘s start-web-page 89

Figure 2.27 Demonstrations against the visit of the Egyptian President al Sisi in Germany 93

Figure 2.28 Protesting Egyptian during the press conference of Merkel and al Sisi in Berlin 94

Figure 2.29 Different examples of Public Diplomacy between Egypt and Germany 99

Figure 2.30.: Brand communcation and positioning strategy surrounded by unintended brand elements 101

Figure 3.01 Tourist experiencing the Pyramids at Giza 105

Figure 3.02 Places mentioned - Survey 1 111

Figure 3.03 Sights mentioned - Survey 1 112

Figure 3.04 Means of transportation - Survey 1 112

Figure 3.05 Did you ever pay any attention to Egypt through media? Survey 1 115

Figure 3.06 Do you know any publication of egypt.travel? Survey 2 115

Figure 3.07 Which topics have been depicted concerning Egypt? 116

Figure 3.08 Do you know any Egyptian companies, organisations or products ? 116

Figure 3.09 Which organisations, companies or products do you know? 117

Figure 3.10 Which famous Egyptians do you know? 118

Figure 3.11 Would you factually spend holidays in Egypt? 118

Figure 3.12 If you would not want to spend holiday in Egypt, why? 118

Figure 3.13 When have you been to Egypt? 119

Figure 3.14 How would you categorize your holiday in Egypt? 120

Figure 3.15 Which places did you visit in Egypt? 121

Figure 3.17 Please rank these aspects according to its quality 122

Figure 3.16 Which sights did you visit in Egypt? 122

Figure 3.18.: Would you recommend Egypt as a holiday destination? 122

Figure 3.19 How do you characterize Egypt after / before holidays? 125

Figure 3.20 What do you associate with Egypt after / before holidays? 126

Figure 3.21 Please rank the attributes according to the Egyptian mentality 127

Figure 3.22 Describe your feelings during your stay in Egyptians by ranking the attributes 127

Figure 3.23 How concerned have you been during your holiday in Egypt regarding the safety? 127

Figure 3.24 Did you obtain special information on security? 128

Figure 3.26 Did you find Cairo more threatening than the rest of Egypt? 128

Figure 3.25 Which source did you use to obtain information on security? 128

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Figure 3.26.2 If yes, why did you find Cairo more threatening than the rest of Cairo? 128

Figure 3.27 Brand communcation and positioning strategy - brand awareness 131

Figure 3.28 Brand Hexagon accoding to tourist‘s brand awareness, 133

Figure 4.01 SWOT-Analysis according to the vision of improving the image of Egypt 140

Figure 4.02 Framework of recommended strategy 143

Figure 4.03 Famous sign „what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas“ 145

Figure 4.05 Red-Light District Amsterdam 146

Figure 4.04 City-logo of Las Vegas 146

Figure 4.06 Slogan of Amsterdam in the city 147

Figure 4.07 Recommended messages to visualize 148

Figure 4.08 Start-page of New York City‘s tourism website 149

Figure 4.09 Start-page of Hong Kong‘s tourism website 149

Figure 4.10 Start-page of Tokyo‘s tourism website 149

Figure 4.11 Start-page of Dubai‘s tourism website 150

Figure 4.12 Start-page of Amsterdam‘s tourism website 150

Figure 4.13 Start-page of San Francisco‘s tourism website 150

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INTRODUCTION

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Introduction

In a globalized world all places face a certain competition with other places in their attempt to attract talent, tourists, investment, trust, events, goods produc-tion, trade, science etc. „In such an environment, as in any busy marketplace, brand image becomes a critical factor; the necessary short cut to an informed buying decision“ (Anholt, 2010, p. 4). The competition causes the need for places to position themselves and to build up a strong and positive reputation, since it has an enormous influence on the possibilities of development. Consequently, more and more places big and small become aware of the urgent need to shape their urban imaginary (Helmy, 2008) through a careful communication within a strategic branding.

Cairo, being a mega metropolis of enormous international meaning, is taking different steps towards place branding - the most obvious and loudest voice is the promotion of tourism within the branding attempts of Egypt and its capital. It seems a logical, since tourism is of high importance for the country's natio-nal economy, making more than 10% of it (pwc, 2013, p.40). According to Nada Tarbush (2012) Cairo too prepares itself ambitiously for the creation of a desi-rable city image, and includes tourism as an important drive for the urban deve-lopment vision. Apart from urban beautifications and physical improvements, strong attention is also dedicated to the creation of a particular media-image that attracts tourists. Nevertheless, the city's image is product of multiple influences and va-rious actors, including both positive and negative elements. Place branding is heavily challenged by these external, uncontrollable influences, which contribu-te to the brand as well. Therefore, within this research, it will be distinguished

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between intended influences on the brand, such as anything belonging to the branding strategy; and unintended influences on the brand, including everything that shapes the place imaginary beyond the scope of official place brander's con-trol (media, internet communication, stereotypes and clichés, etc.). Especially in regard to the recent political changes in Egypt, which caused severe problems such as declining visitor numbers in tourism, the investigation in intended and unintended influences on the urban imaginary seems appropriate and highly in-teresting. It seems likely, that the strong documentation of violence, protest, mi-litary, terrorism etc. affected the perception of the country, held by tourists and potential tourists, in a negative way. This damage might be one indicator for the dramatically small number of tourists between 2011 and 2014. Taking the bipolarity of influences shaping the place‘s brand into account, the research's issue is 1) examining the Cairo-brand for tourism, created inten-tionally and unintentionally by different actors and aspects and 2) investigating the resulting tourist's urban imaginary. Furthermore, the following objectives, hypothesis and research questions were compiled to guide the scientific process:

Objectives· Investigating the Cairo-brand created by the official tourism-actor · Discerning unintended elements contributing to the Cairo-brand. · Examining the Cairo-brand awareness and perception held by tourists

Research Questions· How do tourists imagine Cairo and perceive its brand? · How is Cairo branded for tourism by tourism actors? · Which unintended aspects are affecting the brand additionally?

Hypothesis· The Cairo-brand is influenced by numerous intended and unintended aspects. · Branding authority uses selective images, to create a positive urban imaginary.

INTRODUCTION

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Methodology

In order to gain an understanding of Cairo's branding for tourism, the obser-vation focussed on the available promotion material, that describes the city as a destination. Here, the main attention was directed to the officially published communication material of the main tourism entity egypt.travel, which belongs to the ministry of tourism. The observations were directed to the examination of visual appearance, which is an essential part of the official intention to create and communicate a certain image. By analysing the imagery delivered through the official material, it was possible to gain understanding of the size, character and dimensions, that the destination Cairo tries to offer. Apart from the officially published materials by the tourism ministry, a sample-check investigation was done on other actor's online presentatios. It included companies from Egypt and Germany which are active in the German tourism-market. Certainly, heir por-trayal of the country and the city are contributing to the image-creation among tourists and potential tourists as well. In order to cover the so called unintended aspects of the city's brand, the overall representation of Egypt and Cairo in the German news was examined, since it is most probably a source of information present to most people. Espe-cially in relation to the revolution, Egypt has been in a medial focus with strong peaks over many years. It is likely, that German news consumers were mainly ex-posed to news of riots, burning public places or governmental violence – strong impression which might have affected the overall imagery and reputation of the country. The drastic decrease in visitor numbers might be an indicator for that hypothesis. Furthermore, different experts and actors in the German-Egyptian cooperation were interviewed to achieve deeper knowledge about the processes between the two countries, and their possible effect on the creation of image and reputation. The second main aspect of the research was to investigate in the tourists‘ urban imaginary. It was the main intention to understand which aspects that shape the brand, have the strongest position in the tourists‘ mind. In that regard, it was important to understand, how strong the tourist's awareness of the of-ficially sent messages by the tourism ministry is - especially in comparison with the various unintended aspects that contribute to the brand as well. It helped to gain an overall understanding about the general reputation and imaginary, that German tourists have in mind, when they think of Egypt. To gain these insights, two different surveys were done, both of quantitative nature. The first one targe-

METHODOLOGY

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ted Germans who have been tourists in Egypt. It examined their motivation and reasons to visit the place, the interests and plans during the stay and their fee-lings and satisfaction about the journey. Analysing the survey meant to statisti-cally compare the results in order to see the urban imaginary's dominating views, ideas, influences etc, with a special regard to the possible effects of the political changes in Egypt. The second survey included an experimental approach, that was inspi-red by a comparable research done by Robert Govers and Frank Go (2009) in the Netherlands. Random Germans who have neither been tourists in Egypt, nor have the plan to spend holidays there, were contacted via e-mail and asked to write a short fiction about their holidays in Egypt. Asking people, who never vi-sited a place, to write a report about an imaginary holiday there, offers many in-teresting layers of information to the research about the place imaginary, such as the 1. mental size of the place; 2. knowledge about it; 3. general attitude towards it; 4. expectations, stereotypes, clichés or biases; 5. likelihood of a visit; 6. possi-ble objections towards certain aspects, etc. The results of the observations and surveys were summarized and compa-red according to a modified version of the brand communication and positioning strategy by Risitano (2008) (see figure 0.1). It combines the whole brand com-munication including all its intended aspects, with the resulting tourists brand awareness (see figure 0.1). Risitano (2008) identifies six components that create the brand identity and describes them in the following way:

INTRODUCTION

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Brand culture is about (...) characteristics based on the cultural aspects of the people (spirit, traditions, event, gastronomy, (...)) and the country (historical sites, monuments, archaeological sites, churches, (...)). Often, this is the essence of a [destination‘s brand] (...);Brand character is related to its internal constitution, how it is percei-ved in terms of integrity, trustworthiness and honesty (Upshaw, 1995). This is also related with the promise of the brand to deliver the experience associated with its distinctive value proposition; Brand personality is the set of human characteristics that are associ-ated with the destination. It includes several characteristics as sincerity, excitement or competence (Aaker J., 1997) (...);Brand name often is the original name of the destination, in domestic or English language: this choice is more important, because it is strongly related with communication strategy on tourist targets. (...)Brand logos (and symbols) is a fundamental element to define a de-stination. A beautiful view, a famous monument or an unique tradition are examples of symbols that – in destination case – could be the main logos to communicate a clear and distinctive value proposition compared to [other] competitive places;Brand slogan represents a promise (...)[and is] based on the main func-tional, emotive or experiential attributes of the destination, related to the benefits and value provided by the place offering. (Risitano, 2008)

Brand Culture

Brand Pers.

Brand

Brand

Brand Symbols

Brand Char.

Brand Identity

Brand Awareness /Knowledge

Sender Receiver

Figure 0.1: Brand communcation and positioning strategy (detail from Risitano, M. 2010 with modifications by Schopf, G. 2015)

Area of intended brand creation

Slogan

Name

METHODOLOGY

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The unintended aspects, which affect the brand and represent an important re-search interest in this thesis, were added to the graphic as well, as they were originally not part of it. The results of the whole research were in the end put into a SWOT analysis, that served as a final combination of all the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, as they were detected throughout the re-search. Continuing with these condensed information, it was possible to come up with concluding recommendations on how to improve and stabilize Egypt's and Cairo's image as a destination by 1. strengthening its brand and brand communi-cation and 2. coping with its weaknesses.

Limitations

A major limitation within the research process in Egypt was a language barri-er, which appeared occasionally. Some contacts and potential interview partners were hard to approach, since no common ground in terms of language to com-municate in was found. Generally, it was a lucky situation to focus on tourism and German tourists, since English and German were widely sufficient. Another limitation was the availability of certain information. This was especially compli-cated by unstructured databases and unreliable partners. The need to confront German tourists with the survey, faced the limitati-on of the reachability – it was not easy to detect a proper number of them among the mixed nationalities of tourists in Egypt. Furthermore, the different places brought individual limitations, such as stressful surrounding and the high secu-rity measurements at the airport, the rushed atmosphere caused by the guidance schedule etc. Generally, the willingness of the people to answer the survey was little. Additionally an equal online survey was used, which was spread via diffe-rent channels, such as Facebook and Tripadvisor to reach former German Egypt tourists. The broad scope of influences on the place imaginary is, in regard to the available research time, a limitation as well. It is impossible to generate a true understanding of all the aspects that influence the perception of different kinds of tourists in Egypt. By limiting the research only on German tourists, the scope of was narrowed down clearly, which was the only way to barely cope with that particular limitation. For the researcher, the German perspective was the only familiar one regarding language, mindset, exposure to certain media channels and messages, attitudes and behaviour, which made it more feasible to gain an

INTRODUCTION

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an overall understanding of an existing image and perception held by Germans. Furthermore, the Germans had represented the strongest visitor nation in Egypt for many years. After 2011 the number of German visitors declined strongly. Other nations, such as Russians, are more present nowadays in Egypts tourism. The decline of German visitors seems to be connected to the political changes in Egypt – therefore it is likely, that the German‘s perception of Egypt changed in a negative way.

LIMITATIONS

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PLACE BRANDING - A GENERAL DISCOURSE

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1.Placebranding- a general discourse

1.1.Literaturereview

The literature review is dedicated to clarify the important terms, which create the basis of this scientific research. Strong attention is directed to different un-derstandings of brand and branding and their implications, according to the available literature. Going from general to detailed information, the literature review will provide insights in the scientific debate on place branding, which includes different scales of places. Tourism, as a dimension of place branding, is highlighted through a deeper analysis of related terms.

Thre authors provided landmark readings, which are the main sources of the thesis: Robert Govers' and Frank Go's Place Branding (2009); Simon Anholt's Competitive Identity (2007) and Places (2010). Furthermore, a graphical mo-del by Marcello Risitano, called Brand communication and positioning model (2008) will be introduced in the literature review detailed, in order to be applied to the findings of the research in the end. Throughout the literature review, it will become evident that the branding of places lacks controllability in comparison to other product and corporate brands. As mentioned in the introduction, aspects outside the boundaries of the brand owner's intention and control, are called unintended aspects of branding, within this research. These influences do not belong to a certain strategy or brand vision. Nevertheless, they contribute as well to the reputation of the place and are an integral part of its brand.

LITERATURE REVIEW

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1.1.1.BrandandBranding

“Brands have become a major player in modern society. In fact they are every-where. They penetrate all spheres of our life: economic, social, cultural, sporting, even religion” (Kapferer, 2008, p.9). People are constantly exposed to brands and their messages. Understanding and learning the messages, makes human beings evaluating their surrounding. It helps them, to put things into relation. The om-nipresence of brands in all fields of life causes a continuously growing body of literature, that covers numerous aspect related to it. An initial differentiation in the scientific debate on brands is the subject targeted by the brand. The scienti-fic literature can be separated in two general streams, which are 1) research on product or corporate brands and 2) research on place brands, including all the different scales like city, region or nation. Both streams share certain similarities, which makes it possible to roughly define brand for both sectors equally as “the good name of a product, an organization or a place; ideally linked to its identity (Kapferer, 2004)“ (Govers & Go, 2009, p). Kapferer (2008) furthermore descri-bes the brand name's need to have power and argues that this has nothing to do with the sound but with the meaning to the audience. It is understood from this approach, that the name has to convey a good representation of the brands' identity – an ability that no name naturally has. The plain name has to be filled with meaning first. Conseqently a brand is name known to a particular audience which connects spontaneously ideas and expectations to it (Karpferer, 2008). According to Govers and Go (2009) Kotler and Gelder add the dimension of consumption, when defining a brand as “a short-cut to an informed buying decision, but most important, a brand is a ‘promise of value’” (Kotler and Gertner 2002; Van Gelder 2003) and describe it as a code for a certain quality that has to be known to the consumer in order to influence his or her buying decision. Stres-sing the words “influencing his or her buying decision” might lead to the slightly bad taste, that the word branding evokes to many people. Simon Anholt, one of the leading researcher and founder of important terms and theories in the field, calls branding a dangerous term, full of associations, which are not positive and emotive often (Anholt, 2007). It seems to be part of a cynical commerce machine-ry, closely related to advertisement, manipulation and uncontrollable competiti-on. Nevertheless, the definitions show a greater dimension that reaches far bey-ond simplistic buying and selling debates. Robert Govers and Frank Go, cite Van Raaij (1995) who “refers to the term ‘brand’ as being closely related to aspects of identity, image, quality and visitor satisfaction” and call it themselves “a repre-


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sentation of identity, building a favourable internal (with those who deliver the experience) and external (with visitors) image (leading to brand satisfaction and loyalty; name awareness; perceived quality; and other favourable brand associa-tions as listed above)”(Govers and Go, 2009). Baker and Cameron (2008) argue, according to Keller, that a brand is a product, that uses further dimensions to differentiate itself from comparable products on the market, which might serve the same need. Differentiation from competitors is an essential and logical need for any brand-holder. The brand becomes the driving force in this process of in-fluencing decisions, which is an irrational and emotional one to a great extend. As Anholt (2009) claims, consumers have usually a good reason and a real reason when purchasing somethin. Brands can be part of the real reason - the added va-lue, that makes the product on offer more attractive, trustworthy or reliable than competing products that full fill the same need or demand. Nevertheless, a brand needs to be carried by a product or a place, that holds and fulfils the promises made. “What advertising and marketing can't ever do is do make a bad city look good (Anholt, 2007). Even if they could - “you can't lie twice” (Anholt, 2007).

1.1.2.Differentiationbetweenproductbrandand types of place brands

The activity called branding and the terms' scientific mentioning was only limited to the field of products and corporate organisations first. “It seems that branding has come a long way from its beginnings of marking sheep and cattle” (Krochta, 2012) to a complex process and research area with multiple layers and dimension. Its tasks developed further - stating possession and belonging turned into a mi-nor aspect. Product branding, as the process of shaping a product's identity and image, gives a huge amount of power over the message to the sender. “Brand ma-nagement in the commercial sphere only works because the company that owns the brand has a high degree of control over the product itself and over its chan-nels of communication [...]”(Anholt, 2010, p.5). Of course, commercial brands do not exist in empty space and they are exposed to various factors, that are hard to control, such as competitors actions, bad media depiction or even global boycott campaigns, faced by Nestlè for example. The global brand with a huge variety of sub-brands in the food sector is accused of various problematic involvements in ignorant privatisation and exploitation of resources and people. Commercial brands obviously can be affected negatively by their own deeds and they might cause damage to their brand. Nevertheless, it is very much in the hand of the owner

LITERATURE REVIEW

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to avoid such issues, or at least to correct them and invalidate related accusations. In contrast, “the considerable difficulty for the country brand is inter-nal. In fact, a country does not have the same levers of power and authority that enable a company to transform itself from the inside out in order to bring itself into line with the values it promotes in its advertising” (Karpferer, 2008). As described later on in this research, the range of influences, that affect the brand of a place, is simply to broad and uncontrollable – thinking of politics, media or involved people. Especially the local people, are a factor of both risk and potenti-al for the brand of a place. Naturally, they are an essential part of the brand and contribute strongly to the creation of image and reputation. Anholt (2007) even stresses their importance strongly, in writing they are “the brand – the brand re-flects the genius of the people”. Through their behaviour they hold a great share in the creation and maintenance of a place's brand. This fact receives a great importance, especially through and in tourism, since all the related “activities [...] usually involve consumption of services where the degree of satisfaction is intimately linked to the behaviour and attitudes of employees that provide the service” (Freire, J.R. 2007 ). Freire also argues (2007), that potential tourists apparently decide whether to visit a certain place or not to visit it, according to their perception about the local people. Furthermore it can be assumed, that not each and every local is aware of any strategy or willing to follow a certain track. Unlike companies, which can require a certain mindset and support from their employees, places have “very little power to control the way those reputations are treated or misstreated by their own citizens (Anholt, 2007, p.53). The high amount of control over a corporate or product brand starts with its creation, since they “may often be designed using a clean sheet of paper on which to create their identities” (Govers & Go, 2009). Govers and Go refer to the fact, that product or corporate brands are fictional ideas and Karpferer adds that “commercial brands are often artefacts: they invent a reality that they turn into an image. This imaginary aspect is sold to the consumer as much as the product its-elf” (Karpferer, 2008). Only very few places share this characteristic partly – most grew over a long period of time in a complex process, driven by various factors such as people's culture and religion, architecture and urban form, business and trade, migration, war (destruction) and peace (reconstruction), shrinkage and growth and so on, which makes them “first and foremost a human, local and immovab-le reality (which is not to say that it is unchangeable)[...]” (Karpferer, 2008). Apart from a brand's controllability, a place differs from a product with its complex nature regarding the amount of involved actors. Anholt (2007)


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describes the various interests of different stakeholders and their non-unified attempts to create an own place image to support their business as “complex, muddled and contradictionary”. It is obvious, that the branding process for a place like a country, region or city, faces a more complex context and a more dense network of related issues, than the process of branding a product does. Govers and Go (2009) summarize Pike (2005) who names “six issues that make the application of branding theory to places a complex undertaking, such as the multidimensionality; heterogeneous interests of stakeholders; the politics in-volved; the need for consensus; difficulty in applying the concept of brand lo-yalty; and the availability of limited funding (Govers & Go, 2009). What Pike calls the politics involved and the need for consensus highlights the fact, that branding a place is in most cases a complex democratic process, that means struggling with conflicting interests, ideas and self-perceptions of involved parties. Dominant images which are successfully conveyed might not suit all the actors participating in the brand creation. The country of the world's best cars, might not be the right association to support each and every businesses in Germany but those of the car industry and engineering in general. Different scales of places result in different complexities of branding, in-cluding different challenges and potentials. As Govers and Go (2009) summarize Blain's definition for the broad term place branding from a rather tourism per-spective (et al. 2005), as “the marketing activities (1) that support the creation of a name, symbol, logo, word mark or other graphic that both identifies and differentiates a destination; (2) that convey the promise of a memorable travel experience that is uniquely associated with the destination; and (3) that serve to consolidate and reinforce the recollection of pleasurable memories of the desti-nation experience, all with the intent purpose of creating an image that influen-ces consumers’ decisions to visit the destination in question, as opposed to an alternative one” (Blain et al. 2005, pp. 331–2)“. Simon Anholt (2010) disagrees strongly in calling branding a marketing discipline and states, that the real fasci-nation of it is not accessible this way. He prefers to call place branding competiti-ve identity – a term that tries to host wider dimensions which are the “synthesis of brand management with public diplomacy and with trade, investment, tou-rism and export promotion” (Anholt, 2007, p.3). Anholt appreciates the wider influences on a brand such as those related to international relationship, politics and policies or cultural exchange programs. He focusses here on the controlla-ble part of brand creation that is manageable by the brand owner and stresses public diplomacy as part of it, that is overlooked often. A more open definition

LITERATURE REVIEW

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of city branding is given by Mona Helmy. She is describing it “as the shaping of the urban imaginary of a particular place [...]” (Helmy, 2008, p.10). The general statement leaves much space for interpretations and allows to include various factors in the process of shaping the urban imaginary. As mentioned before, this research will distinguish between two different influences that affect a brand: in-tended and unintened in nature. Consequently, a place brand is understood as as the result of intended or un-intendet processes that shape the urban imaginary, which holds a certain reputation. Place branding is the process that tries to shape the urban imaginary with the deliberate intention to influence the place's repu-tation. In this context [the urban imaginary] “represents a collection of feelings and perceptions about image, urban life, and cityscape” (Helmy, 2008, p.10). In the available scientific literature, strong attention is also paid to the aspects, which form the brand of any kind. Anholt (2007) lists four of them: 1.) brand identity – the core meaning of it; 2.) brand image – the reputation in the consumer's mind; 3.) brand purpose – internal equivalent of the image / power of shared goals; 4.) Brand equity – earned consumer's loyalty and trust. It is im-portant to be aware of them and to direct attention to them within a brand stra-tegy or a brand management. Managing a brand means to clearly communicate these aspects in order to generate a functioning, flexible and sustainable brand, which meets the requirements of competitiveness on the global marketplace.

1.1.3.Tourismasdimensionofplacebranding

The World Tourism Organisation (2000) defines tourism according to Govers and Go “as the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remune-rated from within the place visited” (Govers and Go, 2009). Tourism is an es-sential economical sector for many places, that receives major attention in its branding often. Consequently, the literature on branding for tourism is broad and represents a strong and detailed sub-sector within the place branding de-bate. According to Freire (2007, p.2) “in the tourism field, destination image has been defined as being a ‘set of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that people have of a place or destination”. As seen in this definition, the deliberate acti-vity of branding a place for tourism is often referred to as destination bran-ding, in the literature. “Destination’ implies a tourism perspective, place bran-ding provides an even wider perspective that would include all interactions of


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a place with its environment, including political, outside investment, trade, immigration and media issues. Both destination branding and place bran-ding could include country, region or city branding (Govers & Go, 2009). “ It is understood, that tourism is only one aspect that should be tackled by a holistic place brand – [it] “is often the loudest voice in “branding” the nation, as the tourist board usually has the biggest budges and the most competent mar-keters” (Anholt, 2007, p.25). Having the complex structure of actors and their different interests in mind, it is important to dedicate a fair share to tourism, next to other sectors that should contribute to the brand. Anholt (2007) intro-duced six natural channels, that places use to communicate – these channels are creators of reputation, which makes it important to tackle them within a ho-listic branding strategy. He names next to tourism, people, culture, investment, policy and brands. Through all those a portray is generated and acknowledged by the global community. It is important to unite them through brand manage-ment and to enable mutual support among the different channels. Tourism is in strong need to cooperate with the other aspects of the hexagon and it can benefit strongly from them. People and culture of a particular place might create an in-itial drive in making the decision to visit a destination; knowledge about invest-ment and policies might create more trust and reliability and therefore support a decision as well; product brands of a place belong to its strongest ambassadors - they make known and create the aura of a certain, desirable lifestyle (Anholt, 2010). Especially the case USA illustrates perfectly, how global brands such as Coka Cola, make a certain idea of a lifestyle permanently present to people. They play an extremely supportive role in making a place known. The multi-channel influences on tourists and potential tourists generates an image, that is much bigger than the image that any tourism promotion could ever create.

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1.1.4.Placebranding:betweenidentity,image,perceptionand reputation

“Although the usual context of brand theory may be buying and selling and pro-moting consumer goods, this is a thin layer that covers some of the hardest phi-losophical questions one can tackle” (Govers and Go, 2009). Referring back to the urban imaginary, described as an accumulation of feelings or perceptions on different aspects of a place's urbanity (Helmy, 2008), helps to illustrate the broad dimensions related to branding, such as “the nature of perception and rea-lity, the relationship between objects and their representation, the phenomena of mass psychology, the mysteries of national identity, leadership, culture and soci-al cohesion, and much more besides” (Govers and Go, 2009). Understanding the creation of a strong and positive reputation as a major objective of any branding attempt, makes it necessary to have a closer look at the term. Oxfords dictionary defines reputation as “the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someo-ne or something”. The description highlights two important facts: 1.) a reputation is neither necessarily based on the truth, nor is it certainly fair or appropriate; 2.) it is a collective idea, held by a group of people who might be exposed to the same or comparable information and values or attitudes. Therefore, the reputation of a particular place differs from place to place – Egypt is perceived and appreciated differently by Germans than by Russians for example. Generally it can be said, that “all the places with good, powerful and positive reputation find that almost everything they undertake on the international stage is easier; and the places with poor reputation find that almost everything is difficult, and some thins seem virtu-ally impossible” (Anholt, 2007, p.2). A reputation will never be the result of a full knowledge of about a place's identity, but always a fragmented and brutally sim-plified glimpse of it. Clichés and stereotypes are likely to be the main foundation of reputation-creation – in many cases they are dominated by negative and often humiliating ideas: low quality production made in China, unfunny Germans, the ignorant and selfish USA, or radical-religious Arabs. Sure, stereotypes can be po-sitive as well: harmony and peace from China, world's best engineering from Ger-many, personal freedom in the USA, or Arabic hospitality are just a few examples. Our imagination and reputation of a place is gained through our perception of it. Perception as “the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses” (Oxford dictionary), can open a discussion on its blurry rela-tion to reality. Anholt (2007) describes human beings simply as creatures who's reality is made out of perceptions. Obviously, a person's perception creates his


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or her idea of reality. For the place branding context, this implies the notion that the place imaginary held by certain people, might be understood as reality by them, even though it is a highly filtered and individual image. The ways how the-se perceptions of places are gained became diffuse. “Technological advancement and increased international competition thus affect the way in which places are imagined, perceived and consumed” (Govers & Go, 2009). Referring back to the huge amount of actors involved in the brand of a place, it is important to under-stand how perceptions can be shaped through multiple media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tripadvisor, blogs and any other kind of individual, internet-based communication. This is a fact that place branders have to accept and to understand as a challenge – any step of limitation would be unacceptable cen-sorship. Often a wrong or negative perception has to be cured through branding – the branding strategy has to replace certain perceptions by new and positive ones, which reflect more of the place's reality or the place's ambitions of its own development. The perception shapes a mental image or place imaginary. The literature differentiates two different kinds of images that shape the overall place image – brand images and visual image. According to Helmy (2008), the brand image is an intangible and imaginary image, representing associations with the place's people, events, culture etc. that are created by media, urban communication, tou-rist guides, TV reports etc. It stands in loose relation to the visual image, defined by Helmy (2008) as the two dimensional, tangible representation of a city, por-traying a result of its physical formation process.

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1.1.5.Branding–intendedandunintended

As explained, the influences on a place's brand are numerous and complex in nature. Moreover, places find themselves in a dense network of associations and relations of culture, politics, religion etc. At the same time, a place brand is influ-enced by the greater context it exists in. Egypt's brand is truly not only created by processes happening within the countries boundaries, but it is strongly exposed to international incidents, attitudes and perceptions in relation to the country. The Arab and the Muslim world for example are scales, which include Egypt and reflect on it. As mentioned before, a place will never have full control over its brand – too broad are the influences affecting it. More over, the urban imaginary held by a person is fundamentally depending on his or her depth of the knowledge or the sheer size of information volume regarding the particular place. This research separates further between two different kinds of branding intention: 1.) Intended influences are those, that are deliberately created to shape the brand of the place. In most cases, they follow a certain strategy, focus on a particular target group and try to form a positive reputation. The intended influ-ences on a place brand are mostly economically motivated and often issued by entities within the place, tourism enterprises outside it or people who feel loyal to the place. Intended influences on a place brand are for example promotional materials such as logos, slogans, websites, videos, advertisement, print material issued by official branding entities of the particular country and other enterprises outside the country. 2.) Unintended influences are those, that communicate mes-sages about a particular place, without the intention to contribute to its brand or to shape the place imagination held by people. They shape the brand without the intention to do so. Examples with major impact are the media depiction of a place in documentations or the news, screened in TV, online or printed in maga-zines and papers. In many cases, they represent the only information people get about certain places, which makes them possibly the strongest contributor to the place imagination these people might have (see figure 1.1). Furthermore, there are plenty of brand influences, that can not be catego-rized in a general way, because they can be both intentionally or unintentionally, such as literature, films, word of mouth and mouse, contact to locals, cuisine etc.


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Area of (un)intended brand creation

Brand Culture

Brand Pers.

Brand

Brand

Brand Symbols

Brand Char.

Brand Identity

Brand Awareness /Knowledge

Sender Receiver


Any means of expressing or

imaging the place

Figure 1.1: Brand communcation and positioning strategy in relation to the areas of intended and unintended brand creation (detail from Risitano, M. 2010 with modifications by Schopf, G. 2015)

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Egypt‘s:place brand /tourism industry /image creation /tourism promotion

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Figure 2.1.: Camels, the desert and the Pyramids of Giza - Symbols of Egypt? (Richard Nowitz, National Geographic Image Collecion, 2007)

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BRANDING CAIRO

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2:BrandingCairo

2.1.TheBrandofCairo–thebrandofEgypt?

Truly, there is a difference between a city and its country, which also reflects on the brands. A country, being a bigger structure that represents more people, business, cultures, habits, traditions or industry, should naturally have a more complex brand identity than a city, which is smaller in physical and socio-eco-nomical scale. Nevertheless, to distinguish between a country and its capital might be a challenging task in many cases, since this particular city represents and reflects often in many ways the bigger picture, which is is extracted from the country scale.

In the case of Egypt and Cairo, separating both seems hardly possible, since it is a particularly strong relation between them, which is even illustrated by the language: Masr, the country's name in Arabic is naturally used to refer to Cairo, since Cairo is Egypt, and Egypt is Cairo according to the Egyptian self under-standing. Apart from that, Cairo is the absolute centre of power, administration and Egyptian self perception. Being situated along the main vein of life, the river Nile, its prolific Delta, the Desert and being close to the sea, Cairo shares the ma-jor landscape characteristics of Egypt. Therefore, the investigations will target Egypt, with a particular focus on Cairo in the relation to tourism. Here it is espe-cially interesting, which share Cairo holds within the tourists place imagination of Egypt. To understand the place brand of Cairo, Egypt has to be the frame. Ac-cording to Simon Anholt, a nation brand consists of six elements, which he com-

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bines in the hexagon of competitive identity (see figure 2.2). The elements are the nations' investment, people, culture, policy, product or corporate brands and tourism. They are the ambassadors, which communicate the country to the glo-bal community. The six elements are also targeted within the survey belonging to this re-search, which will be described later on. It is especially important to understand the relation between the hexagon's elements with the focus on tourism. All of them, in differing intensity, can strengthen the tourism brand or weaken it. De-finitively, tourists will find themselves dealing with all the six parts: tourism is an investment in another country to a certain extend for the tourist, that implies that people visit that place to experience its culture, interact with its people and maybe consume its specific product brands. While being in a country, the tourist is exposed to its policies as well. All of these aspects influence the country's repu-tation and the willingness of people to visit it as a tourist. Karpferer (2008) calls it “international dispersal”, which is needed to shape the place‘s image globally. Examples of the brand Egypt, according to Anholt's Hexagon of Competitive Identity are:

Brands(corporateandproduct):Brands can be very strong speakers for a certain idea or attitude of a country. Good examples are the USA, which ma-naged to convey messages though its products in accordance with a particular self understanding and symbolism. An idea of the American way of life is known to most of the people in the world. Thinking of Marlboro and the freedom of

Culture

Brand Hexagon

Investment

Brands (products, corporate)

People

Policies

Tourism

Figure 2.2.: Brand Hexagon / hexagon of oompetitive identity, showing a place brand‘s channels of communication (Anholt S. 2010)

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the cowboy, Lewi jeans and its style of rebellion or Ford and the glorious suc-cess one entrepreneur can have. Based on examples like these and further ar-gumentation, Anholt calls the USA the strongest brand of the world and exp-lains his thoughts in detail in Brand America (Anholt, S. & Hildreth, J. 2010) Egypt is not known for its corporate or product brands in the first place – especially to Europeans, not much of the existing examples might be famili-ar. Generally, problematic standards in terms of quality might have contributed to the fact, that Egyptian products did not reach Europe's attention very much. Existing brands in the sector of clothing or food are obviously mainly limited to the local market. Nevertheless, according to Dinnie (Nation branding, 2008), a complex strategy was planned to be introduced, aiming at re-branding Egypt as producer of high quality cotton. It is noticeable, that Egypt was highly apprecia-ted as producer of the world's best cotton, approximately until the 50ies of the last century, as Bernd Erbel, former German ambassador in Egypt, explains du-ring an interview with the author. He states that a focus on the cotton as a high quality product for the market has strong potentials to support the international reputation of Egypt. Apart from clothing, Egypt is a fruitful, agricultural country, that produces a huge variety of fruits and vegetables in the Nile Delta or the Fay-oum oasis close to Cairo. The climatic conditions allow a broad range of products such as dates, mango, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn and many more. Some of the agricultural products can be produced and harvested throughout the whole year.

Policy:Of course, policy is a part of the brand which impacts tourists in a rather indirect way. Most people have only little or no imagination and interest in ano-ther countries policies and political regulations. Depending on the country, the policies and related issues might be far beyond the scope of people's awareness, since only a limited knowledge of global incidents can be memorized at one time – it usually spans over just a few foreign countries, which are in most cases the strong global player in industry and power. So, many people outside the USA might have a certain imagination of the policies and politics of the USA, whereas just very few hold a comparable idea of a developing country in Africa or Asia. Although Egypt is considered the major player and state of stability and trust in the Arab world, it can be doubted that Europeans, Americans or Australians know much details about Egyptian policy. The travel regulations might be a par-ticular detail they could get in touch with, when preparing themselves for a visit. Here, a current example related to tourism policy is Egypt's new regulation of


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visa requirements, which affect travellers negatively, since the process of ente-ring Egypt became more complicated and allows no spontaneous visit easily, ac-cording to latest plans. In times of terror and extremism related to Islam, Egypt's position and reaction is present in the news occasionally, which could potentially reach the global attention. Furthermore, the political changes, which were stron-gly reported, gave insights in the Egyptian politics to a global audience.

Culture:Truly, culture can be the main asset of the destination's attempt to promote tourism. It is in many cases the fundamental object of interest that is portrayed ambitiously. Often the culture brands a country almost alone and re-presents at the same time an untouchable and incredible resistive power. It often symbolizes a country more than anything else and. Consequently, it might offer the most dominant part of the place imagination in many cases. Often the cul-ture is fully conveyed through architectural landmarks, such as monuments. Of course, Egypt is one of those few counties, that is gifted with such landmarks of incredible symbolic power. The pyramids are an association to almost everybody and the main element of the place imagination. Their strength might even sup-press other elements of the country's cultural richness. In terms of tourism, the monuments' value can hardly be exaggerated. It is for many tourists the essential thing they want to see, photograph, and talk about after returning home. Egypt's tourism promotion uses the culture as a main drive. The ancient culture, sheer size and unique mythic of the site, might have influenced the decision to promo-te the country as the place where it all began. In Germany ancient Egypt is an essential aspect of history education in school. Consequently, Germans should have developed a certain depth in imagining the country's history and culture.

Investment:The investment of a country might have a rather small effect on how a country is perceived by people outside the country. Similar to most of the policy activities, people are not aware of such details related to foreign countries. Nevertheless, it would support the overall perception and reputation strongly, if a country is perceived as a trustful and reliable partner on the international stage (Anholt, 2007). Tourism could benefit from the fact, that potential tourists see these positive attributes in a particular place, since it might be associated with good governance, stability and security. Egypt started a complex and ambitious campaign to re-brand its own qualities in terms of investment, by announcing the plan to build a new capital city. Investors from all over the world were invited to realize enormous infrastructural projects within a tight time frame. Apart from

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the scale of reality and applicability in this plans, a major intention seems be to attract global attention, to convince potential partners and to catapult Egypt in the forefront of investors awareness, towards the development of a modern coun-try with high standards in technology, science, business and education.

People:According to Freire (2007), local people are an important aspect of place brands, which is logical due to the fact that every interaction between visitor and local contributes to the place perception. Anholt (2008) stresses on their impor-tance as well and calls them the brand. By highlighting the people's share within the hexagon of competitive identity that strongly, Anholt refers to the huge varie-ty of interactions and situations of meaning related to them. The mentality of the people will often be the characterisation that people find to describe a place. Of course, especially this aspect of the hexagon brings stereotypes and clichés into play – certain peoples are strongly linked to a particular idea of behaviour and attitude, which is not always fortunate or true. Overcoming these imaginations is time consuming and challenging. Often it is simply beyond the power of the particular place to communicate new images over a certain distance. Much more effective and likely to succeed is real contact between people of different cultures, as a way to reduce such stigma. The acting role of people within the brand of a nation comes into play especially in terms of tourism. Being a tourist in a foreign country means to highly depend on the local people. Their willingness to create an atmosphere of hospitality, friendship, trust and support will affect the travel experience strongly. This goes far beyond the staff of hotels and tourism agen-cies or other actors in tourism and tourism related business, but includes every individual living in the destination. Egypt is a country that is strongly convinced of its own strengths in this aspect – truly, the average mentality fulfils high ex-pectations in most of the cases. Nevertheless, an important player in Egypt that contributes to the aspect “people” are souvenir sellers and vendors of all kind, which are often perceived as impertinence by tourists. A strong part of the “people” within the brand hexagon are famous per-sons from music, sports, film etc. since they convey a particular strength and feeling of the place. Well known persons can become symbols of national pride, which makes them powerful communicators of a place's identity.


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2.2.TourisminEgypt

Tourism is in many cases the loudest voice among the channels within the hexa-gon of nation branding. For Egypt it represents an enormously important sec-tor of economy as well. At the same time, it appears to be unstable and reactive to political incidents – the Egyptian tourism was suffering strongly from recent political instabilities and connected riots. Egypt's high involvement in tourism seems naturally caused by the huge variety of elements the country can offer to visitors. Culture and monuments from different periods and religions, per-fect weather conditions for various activities such as swimming, snorkelling, diving, hiking, relaxing etc. which are in harmonic cooperation with the great possibilities provided by Egypt's landscape features and natural diversity of different seas and deserts and cities big or small. Egypt is a country with a long history in hosting guests, which is documented in various famous novels and travel reports, written by authors such as Roald Dahl, Jules Vernes or Agatha Christie. Narrations and documentations tell about journeys on the river Nile, desert experience or the colonial adventures from both perspective's Egyptians and guests. A whole sector of literature can be found only on the excavations of Egypt's great ancient monuments through foreigners – a topic, which still thrills authors in literature or producer of cine-ma and the global audience with its vast mystical dimensions including unans-wered questions, robbery of great treasures or frightening curses lying over the tombs of the Pharaohs. The ongoing mystification of ancient Egypt might conti-nuously contribute to the economical meaning of tourism for the whole country.

FactsandfiguresThe importance of tourism in Egypt's economy is described with different and sometimes contradicting numbers from different sources. Price Waterhouse Coopers (2013) announces that it represented more than 10% of the economy. Other sources calculate an overall contribution of up to 20%. In the year 2014 Egypt's GDP amounts approximately 284,9 billion US-dollar (Germany Trade & Invest, 2014). The whole contribution of tourism to this number was estima-ted in the same year to be little higher than 12 %, according to World Travel & Tourism Council. Consequently, the number of employees working in tourism is remarkably high – in the year 2014 more than 1,250.000 people were directly

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working in tourism all over the country, which represents a little bit more than 5 % of the whole economy's employment (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2014 ). The number of Egyptians who are directly involved in tourism (such as workers in hotels or tourism agencies, souvenir sellers, tour guides etc.), plus the number of people who are occasionally profiting from tourists (such as taxi drivers, res-taurant owners etc.) and all their relatives benefiting from it in that way is enor-mous and illustrates strongly, how important tourism is for the country. Certain regions in Egypt are completely depending on tourists, especially cities along the Red Sea like Hurghada, El Gouna or Sharm el Sheikh face a high dependence. Of course, the economical meaning of tourism is strongly interrelated with the number of visitors who arrive in Egypt each year. It is the first and least complicated implication among the available figures, which tells a lot about the situation of tourism. In fact, the number of visitors has dramatically nosedived (pwc, 2012). As monitored by the Egyptian Ministry of tourism and published by Business Monitor International (2013), a total number of 14.731.000 tourists arrived in Egypt in 2010, whereas in 2011, after the political changes started, only 9.845.000 tourists visited the country. In 2014, more than 9 million foreign visitors, excluding Egyptians, were arriving in Egypt, which is a slight increase in comparison with 2013 (World Tra-vel & Tourism Council, 2014). Nevertheless, in comparison to the success year 2010, having more than 14 million foreign visitors, the severe weakness of the re-cent years becomes evident – after the revolution year 2011, the tourism in Egypt crashed heavily. The long lasting riots and political changes smashed tourism in the whole country – different tourism organisations in certain places stopped operating completely due to the sheer lack of tourists. Egypt can offer a great variety of tourism products, which are naturally derived from its great span of geographical features or its long lasting traces of ci-vilisation. Nevertheless, Egypt‘s Minister of Tourism, Hesham Zazou, argues that tourism in Egypt has “two feet to stand with” (Zazou, H. macropolis.net, 2015), which represent the main focus among the different types of tourism-products: 1.)cultureand2.)sun&sea (see figure 2.4-2.9). Clearly, the remains of ancient culture in Egypt make the culture product the most important USP (unique selling proposition) to the country's tourism. Still, Egypt's sun & sea product, offering a full year holiday availability, is only challenged by the Gran Canaria within the boundaries of middle-distance des-tinations for European tourists. All the other competitors such as Greece, Tu-nisia, Morocco or Spain can only provide a seasonal sun & sea product (Zazou,

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H. 2013). Nevertheless, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism bemoans the current weakness of its “culture tourism-product” in comparison to the “sun & sea tou-rism-product”. The latter one makes a share of up to 95 % since the tourism crisis has started. Therefore, an important goal is to reach a slight shift back to former numbers of the years before 2011. The unbalanced relation of the “culture pro-duct” and the “sun & sea product” should even out at 20% to 80% in the coming years (Zazou, H. 2013), which would reflect better the USP of Egypt's tourism. The current weakness of the culture in Egypt's tourism might be the consequence of a more fragile or unclear security situation in the different cultural places. Luxor for example was subjected to severe attacks against tourists, and Cairo is regularly facing terrorism. The facts and figures mentioned show, that tourism is a rather vulnerable sec-

tor of economy, which tends to be prone to crisis, caused by different reasons. Nevertheless, Olaf Collet from Deutsche Reiseverband said in a telephone in-terview, that crisis, such as political changes or occasional terror attacks, harm the tourism of the particular place usually only for a short time nowadays. He argues, the stigmatisation through such incidents is not as strong as it used to be, because threats became global, through terrorism attacks in Madrid, London, Boston etc. Obviously, single incidents are accepted as phenomena that do not necessarily implicate a strong meaning for the affected place, since they could happen all over the world. The recent disastrous terror attack in Tunisia with 22 people killed, only caused a short term decline in holiday bookings for example (Olaf Collet, DRV, 2015). The slow recovery of Egypt might be the result of the fact, that critical incidents occur with a frightening regularity – attacks in Cairo, partly lost state's

Figure 2.3.: Relation of the economic meaning of the two main tourism products and vision of shift (according to statements of Hesham Zazou, 2013).

20135%

95%

20%

80%

Future

Culture

Sun & Sea

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Figure 2.4.: The Sphinx of Giza (touriste-gypt.com 2015)

Figure 2.7.: Hotel in Hurghada (movie-gatehotel.com 2015)

Figure 2.5.: The Citadell of Saladin (vive-project.co 2015)

Figure 2.8.: Diving in Hurghada (thescu-badivingdirectory.com 2015)

Figure 2.6.: Coptic Church in Cairo (dinashote.worpress.com 2015)

Figure 2.9.: Beach in Hurghada (redse-aholidays.co.uk 2015)

Tourism product: Culture

Tourism product: Sun & Sea

Other tourism products:Health,Education,Hikingect.

Hotel & Leisure

Pharaohnic Heritage

Diving & Snorkelling

Islamic Heritage

Beach activities

Coptic Heritage

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control in Sinai, threats in the western desert, problematic situations in neigh-bour states or ongoing protests are continuous problems for the country's safety. According to Bernd Erbel, former German ambassador in Egypt, safety is the most essential need to provide for tourism. Obviously, there are concerns re-garding the status of safety in Egypt that frighten the important tourist nations from Europe, like Germany, Italy or France. Even though it is not known that tourists have been directly affected or even harmed by the revolution, the fear seemed to have been stronger than the trust in the country. A strong contribu-tion to the huge decline might be the attitude of different foreign ministries of visitor nations, which announced strong travel bans. The German federal for-eign office announces until now travel alerts and stresses, that high attention and awareness should be paid all over the country, including the very tourism based sites along the Red Sea. In peak times of the political riots, the warnings recom-mended strongly not to visit the country, or to leave it if inside. German tourists were responding strongly to the alerts by choosing another destination to spend holiday in. The Egyptian Minister of Tourism calls it a priority to negotiate with foreign partners on a political level, in order to recreate trust. It is an urgent need to abolish, or at least soften the travel bans. According to him, teams from impor-tant visitor nations, like Germany, were regularly invited to evaluate the status of security in Egypt and to give recommendations to improve, which were taken seriously (Zazou. H. 2013, Interview). Fortunately, tourism seems to be on a successful recovery in some parts of Egypt. Prof. Dr. Rafai from Helwan university gives optimistic prognosis in an interview done for this research, when he argues that tourism might be back on the level of 2010 in the year 2015. He states that many hotels for example used the period of decline to prepare themselves for better times, by doing restora-tions and reconstructions of different kind. Official attempts by the Egyptian Mi-nistry to improve the situation of tourism are numerous – Hisham Zazou, Minis-ter of Tourism, announces two main priorities for 2015 and the following years: 1)Gainingbackthemarketshareasfastaspossible2)Improvingtheperception of Egypt among potential tourists. Regarding the second point, the Minister of Tourism explains that “we [Egyptian tourism industry] are selling perceptions – dreams. If the perception, or the dream, is not met by reality, no tourism can flow” (Zazou, H. macropolis.net, 2015). The fact that Zazou is particularly stressing the improvement of the perception shows that an urgent need for place branding was recognised. Further strategic steps to better the situation of tourism business in Egypt are for examp-

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le a strategic improvement of the air connectivity - new flights were established from the global hubs like Istanbul, directly to Hurghada and Luxor. Despite numerous strategical long term and tactical short term plans to push Egyptian tourism, Egypt's involvement in various problematic internatio-nal incidents can hardly be neglected. Terrorism, radicalism, weak neighbour-states etc. are a severe threat to the country's stability, which will affect tourism negatively.

2.2.1.Cairo'stourism

Cairo plays a rather small role in the tourism of Egypt. Especially in the recent problematic years for the Egyptian tourism, Cairo witnessed a strong decline in the visitor numbers too. According to Prof. Dr. Rafai from Helwan University, the hotels in Cairo have a utilization of only 20 % nowadays, which illustrates the frustrating situation tourism stucks in. The bazaar Khan el Khalili, which is perfectly prepared for tourists, is another good example to experience the lack of visitors. Vendors suffer and complain about the situation, that means a threat for there professional existence. Cairo is one of the places in Egypt, that recover very slowly. Most probably due to reasons related to security and travel alerts, do Egypt travellers still avoid Cairo in many cases. According to Olaf Collet (DRV, 2014), the city plays no role within the German tourism statistics, whereas Hur-gada is the strongest destination in Egypt, from the German perspective. Generally, visitors come in most cases within the narrow boundari-es of organised, guided day-trips to the capital. Tourism enterprises adapted to this phenomena by offering different models of day-trips to Cairo. They can be booked and started from the strong tourism destinations, such as Hurgada, Sharm el Sheikh, Dahab or El Gouna. Tourists who book such trips, usually visit up to three of the following sites in and around Cairo: the Pyramids of Giza, the Egyptian Museum, Khan el Khalili, Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo, the Citadell and a selection of mosques and churches. People then experience the city in a very con-trolled way that does not allow to go beyond the scope of the booked tour. Most of the tours to Cairo are being booked by the tourists in their hotels directly through tour operators, whereas some already book a day trip to Cairo online before the holiday starts. Numbers on individual travellers are not available, but it is safe to say, that they are a small minority among the tourists, who come to Cairo. Moving

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alone in Cairo might be a threatening challenge for some visitors, especially re-garding the traffic situation, which differs strongly from European standards. The fact, that Cairo is regularly subjected to terrorism, makes the city unreliable for tourism. Even Hisham Zazou, Egyptian Minister of Tourism, sets limitations when speaking about safety in Cairo in saying that hotels and sights are safe and under control. It clearly admits a certain doubt regarding safety in the rest of the Cairo, unlike destinations long the Red Sea or Upper Egypt.

2.2.2.GermantouristsinEgypt

The German tourism statistics of the last years did not offer many surprises in terms of destination changes. According to Deutscher Reiseverband, there was only little movement in the top ten of the German's favourite destinations bet-ween 2011 and 2014. With a percentage of 30,5 in the year 2014, Germany itself is by far the destination that is chosen the most among Germans. Among the foreign destinations, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Austria cover the top positions in a rigid manner, whereas France, Croatia, Greek, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark and the USA change slightly between position five to ten between 2011 and 2014. The most famous region for German tourists outside Germany is the Mediterra-nean Sea, having a visitor share of 36,2% in 2014. Even though Egypt de facto belongs to this region, it does not have a position among the top destinations. Statistika (statistika.com, 2014) places Egypt on position number 13 among the German's favourite destinations, grouped as North Africa, together with Moroc-co and Tunisia. Both in 2013 and 2014 it had a share of 2 % in the travel statistics. Even though Egypt is not ranked on very high position, certain places within the country manage to climb high in certain statistics. Hurghada for example, is the strongest motor within the Egyptian tourism machine. The city on the Red Sea has a market share of 8 %, positioned as number three, only behind Antalya (33 % market share) and Palma de Mallorca (28% market share) among the German package holiday which were booked online (traveltainment, 2015). Furthermo-re it is noticeable, that Hurghada's tourism increased in the last three months around 50% in comparison to the previous year. Only now the fast growth slows down remarkably and settled with approximately 15% in comparison to the year 2014 (traveltainment, 2015). Nevertheless, Hesham Zaazou, Minister of Tou-rim in Egypt, gave optimistic prognosis for the development of Egypt's tourism and pointed out that a remarkable upturn started in July 2013. He expects, that

BRANDING CAIRO

51

in the year 2015, Egypt will have more German visitors than in the record year 2010. At that time, 1,3 million Germans (Interview with presseportal.de, publis-hed 23.09.2014) were among the total visitor number of 14.731 million (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, 2014). The important tourism destinations along the coast of the Red Sea witnessed a noticeable shift within the line-up of the tourist's ori-gins. Germans lost their strong position to the Russians, who represent by far the highest number of tourists nowadays. Nevertheless, the Germans are still an important visitor nation for Egypt. Especially in the famous tourism cities along the Red Sea, German tourists were strong in number and an important factor for the tourism economy. Many businesses adapted to the importance of German tourists by offering signs and services in German language for example. Further-more, a certain German cultural influence can be found in the shape of German restaurants or beer bars. Obviously, the constant visits of a particular tourist na-tion in a certain place, can lead to cultural hybrids, which might facilitate the wish of a “being at home feeling” while being far away from home. Germany's package tourism is dominated by a few strong players, which offer holidays in Egypt. In year 2014, the statistics of Deutscher Reiseverband show that TUI Deutschland is the strongest actor in the German tourism, having a market share of 16,7 % and a turnover of 4,4 million Euro. The further places on the list belong to Thomas Cook, DER Touristik, FTI, Alltours, AIDA Cruises and Schauinsland Reisen. German travel agencies made a profit of 26,3 billion Euro in the year 2014, which is an improvement of 1 billion Euro in comparison to the previous year (Deutscher Reiseverband, 2014). All the strong German tra-vel agencies mentioned, offer holidays in Egypt to their clients. It is noticeable, that they only have slight differences regarding their Egypt destinations – most of the big players offer the same places, which are generally Hurghada, Sharm elSheikh, Marsa Alam, Luxor and Assuan plus Cairo or Nile cruises in some cases (see table 2.01). Apart from the strong players within the German tourism, few specialised actors have developed more individual offers for Egypt holidays. Their specialisa-tion shows through either a wider range of offered destinations in Egypt, or more detailed travel schedules to chose from. Usually, they market themselves as ex-perts for extraordinary hotels and places in the country or culture of the country. ETI for example offers leisure destinations beyond the scope of the big tourism actors mentioned before, whereas erlebe-fernreisen.de or Selket's Ägypten cultu-ral holidays offer, which can be arranged in a flexible modularity (see table 2.02). The smaller tourism agencies with Egypt-focus highlight sites in Egypt, that go

TOURISM IN EGYPT

52

Tabelle1

Seite 1

tourism product “sun & sea”

TUI Cairo and region

Nile cruises

Cairo and region

Cairo and region

ETI

Cairo and region

Alexandria and region

tourism product “culture”

tourism product “desert and mountain”

Hurghada and region

Marsa Alam and region

Luxor & Assuan Sharm el Sheikh and region

Thomas Cook

Hurghada and region

Luxor & Assuan Marsa Alam and region

Sharm el Sheikh and region

DER Touristik

Hurghada and region



fti Hurghada and region



Alltours Hurghada and region



Schau-insland-reisen

Hurghada and region



Hurghada and region



erlebe Ägypten

Dahab Bahraria

El Qesir Farafa

Luxor & Assuan Dakhla

El Minia & Sohag Kharga

Siwa

Table 2.01 Strongest actors in the German tourism industry and their offerings regarding Egypt (Schopf G. 2015)

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53

Tabelle1

Seite 2

Cairo and region

different Nile-cruises

White desert

Cairo and region

Nile cruises

Sinai

Cairo and region Black desert

White desert

Nile cruises

Egypt-pur Hurghada and region Bahraria

Fayoum

Luxor & Assuan Siwa

Esna

Helios Reisen

Hurghada and region Bahraria

Luxor & Assuan El Qesir Siwa

Marsa Alam and region Fayoum

Hallo-reisen

Luxor & Assuan

Farafa

Abu Simbel

Tabelle1

Seite 1

tourism product “sun & sea”

TUI Cairo and region

Nile cruises

Cairo and region

Cairo and region

ETI

Cairo and region

Alexandria and region

tourism product “culture”

tourism product “desert and mountain”

Hurghada and region


Luxor & Assuan Sharm el Sheikh and region

Thomas Cook

Hurghada and region



DER Touristik

Hurghada and region



fti Hurghada and region



Alltours Hurghada and region



Schau-insland-reisen

Hurghada and region



Hurghada and region



erlebe Ägypten

Dahab Bahraria

El Qesir Farafa

Luxor & Assuan Dakhla

El Minia & Sohag Kharga

Siwa

Table 2.02 Small actors in the German tourism industry with specialisation on Egypt (Schopf G. 2015)

TOURISM IN EGYPT

54

beyond the scope of Red Sea holiday. Mostly they focus on desert and oasis trips, pharaohnic Egypt and extensive Cairo tours. Furthermore they usually offer gui-ded tours, which lead the client to different places in Egypt. Often, these tours have an educational character or they stress on originality and “real experience”. In comparison with the offerings of the big tourism agencies, the individual ones advertise more content and diversity, rather than relaxation only. Naturally, Cai-ro is much more in the focus of these smaller actors. For the biggest share of the German tourists who book hotel holidays along the Red Sea coast, Cairo visits will happen in only within the boundaries of one-day trips – overnight stays or time beyond a rigid schedule are uncommon. Regardless the size and character of the tourism agencies, website are no-wadays the strongest booking tool for holidays in Germany. With a market share of 43 %, the majority of the 53,5 billion Euros made in 2014, was spent through online payments in Germany (traveltainment, 2014).

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55

TOURISM IN EGYPT

56

Figure 2.10.: Official Logo of egypt.travel, referring visually to Pharaohnic Sym-bols and to kaligraphy, which creates a story-telling atmosphere and narration. It is used in German as Ägypten, wo alles beginnt (egypt.travel.com 2015)

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57

2.3.BrandingCairofortourism

Often, tourism is the loudest speaker in the branding attempts of places. It is usually pushed forward strongly by marketing experts or tourism actors all over the globe, and promoted with big budgets (Anholt, 2007). Particualar sights, such as monuments, landscapes, events etc. are highlighted and portray-ed within the tourism promotion strongly. Certain groups are targeted and ide-ally convinced to visit the country. Often it is necessary to count on a learning process – a certain destination product needs to be introduced, a fascination has to be created, trust has to be gained and a whole set of values has to be conveyed to the potential tourist. Especially places that try to enter the sector of tourism newly, might find it hard to go through that time consuming process. Positioning the own message is a challenging task, especially since the people‘s interest and their mind‘s capacity is limited.

Egypt, being a country with a long history in hosting visitors, is nowadays stron-gly represented as a destination by different tourism actors all over the world. The lucky position of having at least one of the world's “must see sights” and plenty of attractions apart from that, connects Egypt to a very strong visual image that is known all over the world. It can be assumed, that at least the pyramids of Giza, maybe even the valley of the kings, are one of the most particular and memorized symbols held by a place worldwide. It appears to be a great gift to have such a giant image placed in most of the peoples mind. A huge narrative is connected to it and well embedded within the general knowledge of almost all people. It is likely that the almost globally shared imaginary of the Pyramids, including the myths on their construction, the legendary Pharaohs, cryptic hieroglyphs etc. is going to be stronger and longer lasting than any kind of destructive or harmful influences, which might happen to Egypt at any time. Egypt, having placed this powerful picture globally in human beings imagination seems to be gifted from a branding perspective.

BRANDING CAIRO FOR TOURISM

58

2.3.1.Theofficialpromotionthrough“Egypttravel”

The investigation's focus lies on the available promotion material created and used by the highest official entity in Egypt's tourism sector – the Ministry of tou-rism. It published various information and advertisement material in different media through the entity egypt.travel. The promotion reflects the official tou-rism vision of the country and the imagination that is should be conveyed. The strong focus of all their activities is put on the internet, which is used as the main tool to communicate and spread the branding messages. The website www.egypt.travel.com and the various video clips available on YouTube, are the main objects of this analysis, because these tools represent the most flexible ones in use, and they reach the highest number of people without any boundaries. Print products can not compete with the digital qualities mentioned – they are especially very limited in their ability of reaching the targeted group of potential tourists.

Theofficialhomepage„www.egypt.travel.com“The website represents one important tool of a campaign, that includes adver-tisement film-clips and different printed promotion material. The websites name is "Ägypten, wo alles begann". In stressing the idea of being a place of origin, or being a starting point, from that everything else developed, the ambitious subtit-le refers to the well known saying "Masr, Um a dunja –Egypt, the mother of the world". It gives a first and strong hint about the overall direction and tone of the website, which continues to create a general image of the “modern metropolis, embedded in history”. It is noticeable, that Cairo's presentation for tourism is fully concentrated on the website www.egypt.travel.com, which is the whole country's main internet entity for tourists. Not much attention is payed to a single internet presentation of Cairo. Nevertheless, typing Cairo governorate in google, leads to the governe-rates main website, which offers information regarding tourism as well. In terms of technicalities and design standards the page is completely obsolete. It is hard to belief, that a considerable number of potential visitors has ever visited it, es-pecially because it is badly ranked in the search engine's hit-list. Comparing the qualities of the web-page www.cairo.gov.eg to www.egypt.travel.com, it becomes evident, that the full attention and resources were concentrated in the latter, which is why the investigations will only focus on it.

BRANDING CAIRO

59

The page, which was released in 2011, is portraying a huge variety of Egypt's tourism sites, related activities and possibilities. It is available in 12 different languages which are offered in the following sequence: English, German, Spa-nish, Danish, Dutch, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Polish, Czech, Italian, French and Hungarian. After opening the page, which takes long due to issues in the technical structure, the visitor receives a first glimpse of the huge variety in Egypt's tourism. The generation of a strong experience (Grodach, 2009) starts by showing short movies, which consist of pictures from sites only, that are flying slowly over the screen. Trying to catch the visitor's attention, five clips with dif-ferent themes, such as wellness, sport, adventure, or culture, appear in a random manner. Egypt is displayed as a destination of desert quad cruises, diving and snorkelling, golf, luxurious hotels with spas and tempting pools, monuments like mosques, orthodox churches, ancient temples, oriental-Islamic streets, romantic Nile boats or Mediterranean coast cities. Most of the images were taken from places in the south of the country, in the sunny tourism cities along the red sea or the Nile. Cities are hardly represented – in fact the only true image with urban character is Alexandria's coastline, that combines the sea with the built environ-ment. Among these approximately 25 starting pictures, Cairo is only represented once clearly, through the Moaiz street in the medieval city by night. In general, the first impression which can be generated through the starting page, is that Egypt is a purely relaxing, good weather country for different kinds of fun and leisure with a rather small urban character. Its hard to guess from this kind of impression, that Africa's biggest city is the hectic heart and soul of these “calm country”. After selecting Cairo amongst the suggested places, the minor page opens, which is dedicated to the capital. It welcomes the visitor with the first of five land-scape pictures, which are a major tool of image creation used by the authorities. The visitor can interact with them and decide in which direction he or she wants to explore the circled view. Furthermore, it is possible to jump to other pano-ramas via click on displayed destination names inside and outside the city. By highlighting different places, Cairo receives a characterisation which is described in table 2.03 and 2.04.


60

Ta

be

lle1

Se

ite 1

Sig

hts

in

Cair

oIm

ag

ed

th

rou

gh

Cair

o t

ow

er

Inte

ractive p

anora

ma v

iew

of

Cair

o tow

er

Inte

ractive p

anora

ma v

iew

of

Six

th o

f O

cto

ber

bri

dge

Main images

Mo

aiz

str

eet

Inte

ractive p

anora

ma v

iew

of

Moaiz

str

eet

Cit

ad

el o

f S

ala

din

Inte

ractive p

anora

ma v

iew

of

Citadel of

Sala

din

Pyra

mid

s o

f G

iza

Inte

ractive p

anora

ma v

iew

of

Pyra

mid

s o

f G

iza

Al A

zh

ar

park

Inte

ractive p

anora

ma v

iew

of

Al A

zhar

park

Six

of

Octo

ber

bri

dg

e

Ta

be

lle1

Se

ite 2

Main

im

pre

ssio

nC

hara

cte

risti

cs

Urb

an g

reen / r

ecre

ation s

pace

Illu

min

ation o

f ri

vers

ide

light, s

ilence

city s

cape a

nd c

ity f

orm

/ u

rban

gre

en a

nd u

rban r

ivers

ide

fascin

ating, urb

an,

huge, gre

en

His

tori

cal urb

an f

abri

c / Isla

mic

arc

hitectu

re a

nd h

eri

tage

his

tori

c, ori

enta

lic,

monum

enta

l

His

tori

cal la

ndm

ark

/ Isla

mic

m

onum

ent

impre

ssiv

e, his

tori

c,

ori

enta

lic, m

onum

anta

l

Sym

bol of

Egypt / P

hara

ohnic

m

onum

ent

gig

antic, ancie

nt,

uniq

ue, fa

mous, pro

ud

gre

en, re

laxin

g, cle

an,

beautifu

l

Tabl

e 2.

03.:

Port

raye

d si

ghts

in th

e w

ebsi

te e

gypt

.trav

el.d

e

BRANDING CAIRO

61

Ta

be

lle1

Se

ite 1

Cate

go

ries

Imag

ed

th

rou

gh

recommended aspects

Old

(an

cie

nt)

Eg

yp

t

Isla

mic

Cair

o

Co

pti

c C

air

o

Mo

dern

Cair

o

Natu

re e

xp

eri

en

ce

Nile c

ruis

es

Fu

n &

Leis

ure

Wate

r acti

vit

ies

Welln

ess

Desert

exp

eri

en

ce

Photo

gra

phs o

f G

iza P

late

au, E

gyptian M

useum

, P

yra

mid

s o

f A

bu

Sir, S

akkara

Pyra

mid

...

Photo

gra

phs o

f K

han E

l-K

halil

i, A

l Azhar

Mosque, S

ala

h e

l-D

in

Citadel, A

l H

ussein

Mosque

Photo

gra

phs o

f T

he h

angin

g c

hurc

h, S

t S

erg

ius a

nd B

acchu

s

Churc

h, C

hurc

h o

f S

t B

arb

ara

...

Photo

gra

phs o

f Tahri

r square

, C

air

o T

ow

er,

Gaw

hara

pala

ce...

Photo

gra

phs o

f Z

oo in G

iza, B

ird-w

atc

hin

g in F

ayoum

, G

ezir

a

Isla

nd, S

anura

cave

Photo

gra

phs o

f N

ile m

axim

din

ne

r cru

ise, N

ile p

hara

oh c

ruis

e,

Fellu

ca c

ruis

e

Photo

gra

phs o

f La P

acha 1

901, G

ezir

a Isla

nd, G

ezir

a S

port

ing

Clu

b, N

ile P

hara

oh c

ruis

e, F

ellu

ca c

ruis

e, Tahri

r square

, E

gyptian

museum

, C

air

o J

azz c

lub....

Photo

gra

phs o

f A

in S

ukhna, Q

uaru

n lake

Photo

gra

phs o

f H

ilton p

yra

mid

s s

pa, In

terc

ontinenta

l city s

tars

, JW

M

arr

iot hote

l...

Photo

gra

phs o

f sand-b

oard

ing in K

ata

nia

h

Ta

be

lle1

Se

ite 2

Main

im

pre

ssio

nC

hara

cte

risti

cs

bro

ad r

ange o

f Is

lam

ic h

eri

tage

ori

enta

l, p

roud

bro

ad r

ange o

f C

optic h

eri

tage

div

ers

e, pro

ud

urb

an

div

ers

e s

ele

ction o

f natu

reextr

aord

inary

, div

ers

e

Few

fancy N

ile e

xperi

ences

luxury

, fa

scin

ating

Ente

rtain

ment city

rela

xin

g, ente

rtain

ing

Little leis

ure

aro

und C

air

ofu

nny, re

laxin

g

Div

ers

e r

ange o

f health c

are

healthy, lu

xury

Clo

se b

y d

esert

availa

bili

tyfu

n, fa

scin

ating

div

ers

ity o

f P

hara

onic

rem

ain

s

maje

stic, ancie

nt,

uniq

ue, pro

ud

very

lim

ited s

ele

ction o

f m

odern

arc

hitectu

re a

nd p

ublic

space

Tabl

e 2.

04.:

Men

tion

ed a

spec

ts in

the

web

site

egy

pt.tr

avel

.de


62

TheofficialvideoportrayalDifferent videos are available. Yet they are not directly part of the website, but connected via links, that lead to egypt.travel's youtube channel. There, a varia-tion of videos is presented, which differ strongly in terms of quality and level of professionalism regarding their production, content and intention. It is noti-ceable, that egypt.travel is publishing a big stock of foreign material, that was produced externally and not particularly for tourism promotion. As such, history documentaries are offered, done and owned by CNN or BBC for example. Here, the content is mainly the ancient history of the Pyramids and other Pharaoh re-lated landmarks all over the country. The construction of these monuments and the myths on the hieroglyphs are tackled for example. Egypt.travel tries to offer a wide range of material on Egypt's culture and highlights constantly the great dimensions, long lasting traces and great treasures of the country. Furthermore, documentaries on landscape, vegetation and animals can be found in the collec-tion. Again, foreign sources are used to illustrate the great variety of the western desert or the huge importance of the river Nile. A slight try of unifications is the logo of egypt.travel, that was placed on the bottom in the right corner. Still, the video selection presents itself to the user as a rather random collection of anything, that conveys somehow positive images. The quality of video and audio

Figure 2.11.: Map of Cairo published by egypt.tra-vel. A clear focus lies on the old city on the eastern river-bank of the Nile. (egypt.travel.com 2015)

BRANDING CAIRO

63

was obviously not a major criteria for the selection – many of the clips are rather amateur work, which creates a strong break between them together with the un-coordinated and unrelated topics. Having the element of documentary as a big aspect in the video channel, makes the fact noticeable, that the current live in Egypt is abandoned. No video tries to give a neutral and non beautified portray of street scenery, challenges, living circumstances etc. Therefore, important aspects of the Egyptian reality are excluded from the presentation for the sake of preser-ving a pure and only positive imagery in the communication. Existing documen-taries on informality, chaos, poverty, child labour or corruption were not inclu-ded – understandable of course, but in fact the huge variety of the country is fed from these elements as well. Of course, tourists might get a glimpse of it during a visit anyhow, which could cause the feeling of disappointment or of being decei-ved. Apart from this, it can hardly be neglected that reports about challenges and problems are an interesting element as well. As such the idea of creating a purely positive imagery could be reconsidered generally, in order to create a more true and holistic image, which can later proof to be real and enriching. Leaving these external videos aside, the tourism promotion originally done by the official entity egypt.travel will be the focus of the further investiga-tions. The YouTube channel is presented in a confusing organisation, that gives users a hard time finding clips they might be interested in. Especially the language situation is problematic – there is no clear differentiation between them, which would increase the usability remarkably. For the investigations, all the available clips in German and English language were analysed, assuming that 1.) most of the German tourists would be able to understand clips in English language 2.) the amount and level of spoken or written language used in most of the clips is so small, that the message does not depend on it – Germans would understand it without knowing English. 19 videos, published between May 2010 and January 2015, were found and listed in table 2.05. In order to understand the messages sent, the videos were analysed according to:

·places: which places are clearly discernible?·mainimpressions:which physical features are portrayed?·activities:what kind of sports, entertainment etc. is introduced?· presenceofpeople:who is present / person‘s age / locals or tourists? ·story'splot:what happens in the clip?


64

Tabelle1

Seite 2

Activities Presence of people Story's plot

entering night-life

swimming, relaxing, sun-bathing

Cultural sightseeing, horse riding

Shopping, diving, sitting in café, eating, sword-fight, tanura dance, opera play, riding a horse-coach

family with two children, dancers, servants, drivers, musicians

A family experiences entertaining and fascinating days in Cairo, including shopping, cultural shows and visiting monuments

Cultural sightseeing, Diving, Snorkelling, drinking, kite-surfing, swimming, relaxing, shopping, camel ride

A tail-like narration is being told, speaking about a great variety of Egypt's sights. The main focus lies on ancient culture and monuments, which are described in strongest possible terms. Egypt is described as “the mother of the world” and “the cradle of civilisation”, which represents “the most fascinating place on earth”.

Snorkelling, cultural sightseeing, horse riding

Woman (30 – 40 years) with daughter (8-10 years) / Couple / Old Egyptian writing calligraphy

An old Egyptian writes calligraphy, which creates the narrative frame of the collection of impressions shown in the story. A couple is swimming and a women with her daughter are exploring Egyptian monuments.

Snorkelling, cultural sightseeing, horse riding, clubbing, eating, drinking

Woman (30 – 40 years) with daughter (8-10 years) / Couple (25 – 35 years) / Old Egyptian writing calligraphy

An old Egyptian writes calligraphy, which creates the narrative frame of the collection of impressions shown in the story. A couple is swimming and experiencing Cairo's night-life, and a women with her daughter are exploring Egyptian monuments. In the end, the logo of Egypt travel appears in the old men's calligraphy.

Tourist couple (25 – 35 years)

A couple walks into the night-life and enjoys the atmosphere

Tourist – men and woman (25 – 35 years)

A swimming men and a sun-bathing woman have flattering eye contact



A couple, that wears the snorkelling shoes and masks, walks clumsy along the beach to the sea, where it snorkels hand in hand.

Relaxing, Drinking refreshing drinks

Tourist couple (25 – 35 years) / servant

A servant brings a drink to a lady into the luxury hotel room. She takes the drink outside the door, to the beach, where she serves it to her male partner, who relaxes in the beach chair.


A woman is riding with her daughter on a horse. She covers the girl's eyes with her hands and makes her then see the pyramids.

Clubbing, nigh-tlife, drinking tea, holding hands, laughing

Tourist couple (25 – 35 years) / other people dancing

A couple is strolling out in Cairo's night-life, enjoying to dance, eat, drink and appreciating the atmosphere

Tabelle1

Seite 1

Name of clip / length Places Main Impressions

Beach

Red Sea Beach

Red Sea Beach, Hotel

Night out in Cairo / 0:10 /

Spirit of Egypt / 2:05 min Cairo (Giza), Alexandria

Pyramids of Giza, Hotel, Nile, shopping center, Downtown, Khan el Khalili, Koschariplace, Citadel, Azhar park, Moaiz street, Opera, Cornice of Alexandria

Egypt, where it all begins / 3:31 min

Cairo (Giza), Luxor, Assuan, Karnak, Mediterranean coast,

Pyramids of Giza, Red Sea, Pharaohnic temple, Nile, Citadel of Saladin, Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel, Cairo Tower, Hatshepsut's temple, Luxor temple, Karnak temple, Philae temple, Khan el Khalili, Baron Palace, Mediterranean Sea, beaches, Bars, Mohammed Ali Mosque, Sphinx

Egypt, where it all begins / 0:30 min

Red Sea, Luxor, Giza

Pyramids of Giza, Red Sea, Karnak

Ägypten, wo alles beginnt / 1:02 min

Red Sea, Luxor, Giza, Cairo

Pyramids of Giza, Red Sea, Karnak, Moaiz street, Khan el Khalili, Rooftop bar

El Gouna / 0:10 min / 06/05/2010

El Gouna Bazar

Quick luxury in the White Med / 0:10 min

Mediterranean Sea

The breeze of the red sea / 0:10

Romantic Red sea trip / 0:10 min /

Quick look out at Giza / 0:10 / Cairo (Giza) Pyramids of Giza

Cairo (Giza) Khan el Khalili, Rooftop bar in Dokki, Al Azhar Mosque

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65

Tabelle1

Seite 2


entering night-life

swimming, relaxing, sun-bathing

Cultural sightseeing, horse riding

Shopping, diving, sitting in café, eating, sword-fight, tanura dance, opera play, riding a horse-coach

family with two children, dancers, servants, drivers, musicians

A family experiences entertaining and fascinating days in Cairo, including shopping, cultural shows and visiting monuments

Cultural sightseeing, Diving, Snorkelling, drinking, kite-surfing, swimming, relaxing, shopping, camel ride

A tail-like narration is being told, speaking about a great variety of Egypt's sights. The main focus lies on ancient culture and monuments, which are described in strongest possible terms. Egypt is described as “the mother of the world” and “the cradle of civilisation”, which represents “the most fascinating place on earth”.


Woman (30 – 40 years) with daughter (8-10 years) / Couple / Old Egyptian writing calligraphy

An old Egyptian writes calligraphy, which creates the narrative frame of the collection of impressions shown in the story. A couple is swimming and a women with her daughter are exploring Egyptian monuments.

Snorkelling, cultural sightseeing, horse riding, clubbing, eating, drinking


An old Egyptian writes calligraphy, which creates the narrative frame of the collection of impressions shown in the story. A couple is swimming and experiencing Cairo's night-life, and a women with her daughter are exploring Egyptian monuments. In the end, the logo of Egypt travel appears in the old men's calligraphy.


A couple walks into the night-life and enjoys the atmosphere

Tourist – men and woman (25 – 35 years)

A swimming men and a sun-bathing woman have flattering eye contact



A couple, that wears the snorkelling shoes and masks, walks clumsy along the beach to the sea, where it snorkels hand in hand.

Relaxing, Drinking refreshing drinks

Tourist couple (25 – 35 years) / servant

A servant brings a drink to a lady into the luxury hotel room. She takes the drink outside the door, to the beach, where she serves it to her male partner, who relaxes in the beach chair.


A woman is riding with her daughter on a horse. She covers the girl's eyes with her hands and makes her then see the pyramids.

Clubbing, nigh-tlife, drinking tea, holding hands, laughing

Tourist couple (25 – 35 years) / other people dancing

A couple is strolling out in Cairo's night-life, enjoying to dance, eat, drink and appreciating the atmosphere


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Tabelle1

Seite 1

Places Main Impressions

Underwater world

Desert, Oasis, Cave, Fossils, Springs

Red Sea, underwater world

Red Sea, mountains, underwater world

Red Sea, mountains, underwater world

Name of clip / length / published on youtube / language

Diving in Egypt - Discover the Red Sea

Red Sea: Dahab, Ras Mohamed, Hurghada, Marsa Alam

Egypt, incentives / 3:32 min / Cairo (Giza), Luxor, Assuan, Karnak, Abu Simbel

Pyramids of Giza, Temple of Karnak, Abu Simbel relief, Nile, Desert, Red Sea

Egypt desert / 3:58 min Saint Cathrine, Marsa Alam, Different deserts and oasis

Dahab German / 1:09 min Dahab

Egypt, live the magic (part

1) / 0:29 min

Area around Assuan

Nile, Riverside, Landscape, Fields, Pharaohnic temple

Egypt, live the magic (part 2) / 0:29 min

Area around Assuan

Nile, Pharaohnic temple's inside, Landscape

Egypt, the kite-surfing paradise / 0:43 min

Undefined place at Red Sea

Egypt, the kite-surfing paradise, Karolina Winkowska / 3:05 min

El Gouna

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Tabelle1

Seite 2


Diving Divers

walking in temples, Nile cruise,

Different diving places are introduced on a map, before the particular underwater world is screened. A huge variety of fishes and wrecks are being introduced.

Tanura, cultural sightseeing, dinner at monuments, coach-tour, drinking cocktail, Quad-tour, drinking tea from beduines, sand-boarding, boat tour, getting a massage, car race, preparing a conference, playing golf, snorkelling, diving, relaxing, clubbing, horse riding

Dancers, groups of tourists, coachmen, musicians, servants, divers

A huge variety of possible activities is introduced. The focus lies on emphasizing the great abilities of Egyptian hospitality and service. The footage mainly consists of pictures and fewer videos. Much of the video material belongs to previous clips done by egypt travel.

Cultural sightseeing, quad-tour, drinking tea, dancing, listening to music

groups of tourists, local musicians

Different desert destinations of Egypt are being introduced on a map and portrayed with video and pictures. The focus lies on showing the diversity of Egyptian deserts and portraying cultural heritage, which can be found there.

Kite-surfing, learning to do kite-surfing, shopping souvenirs, diving

German visitor (25 – 35 years), other tourists

The camera catches impressions of someone walking along the bazar on Dahab's beach and of people kite-surfing and diving in the Red Sea.

Relaxing, Nile cruise, Felluka cruise, Ballon ride, Dancing,

Man (30 – 40 years) / Pharanonic lady, Nubian musicians, farmer boy with goat

A man's mind is torn out of a stressful traffic jam in New York by a Pharaohnic lady, who appears on time square's advertisement screens. He ends up in southern Egypt where he experiences astonishing and relaxing impressions.

Man (30 – 40 years) / Pharaohnic lady / coachmen

A man's mind is torn out of a stressful traffic jam in New York by a Pharaohnic lady, who appears on time square's advertisement screens. He ends up in southern Egypt where he experiences astonishing cultural impressions.

relaxing, drinking cocktail, kite-surfing, snorkelling with fishes

Woman (20 – 30 years) / other kite surfers

A woman is lying in beach chair, having a cocktail, before she takes the boat to go to the sea, where she is snorkelling and kite-surfing artistically

relaxing, transportation, kite-surfing in the sea and in artificial area, eating in restaurant, snorkelling with fishes, drinking cocktail, stroking a cat, visiting a museum, taking photographs

Karolina Winkowska (professional kite-surfer) / other kite-surfers / volleyball players / Tuk-tuk driver

Karolina Winkowska is enjoying a day in El Gouna, that includes a big variety of possible activities like kite-surfing, snorkelling, boat rides, beach activities, relaxation, eating and drinking.

Table 2.05.: Video-content-analysis (Schopf G. 2015)


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Furthermore, the videos were categorized in two groups, according to their re-lease dates: 1) those which were published in 2010, before the Arab revolution 2) those which were published 2014 or 2015, a couple of years after the Arab Revolution (see table 2.06). In order to analyse further and differentiate between the two groups, different coding concepts, derived from the study Investigating tourism branding through video content analysis (José I. Rojas-Méndez, 2009), were applied:

Economic Wealth: Images of visitors spending time on a yacht, fine dining, driving expensive cars, etc. Local Accent: In videos that contain speaking the speaker(s) verbalizes an accent that is local to the nation (an Australian video with speakers having a traditional Australian accent). Political Reference: Multiple images of past or present government leaders or militaristic exercises. Significant Product Placement: Product placement is defined as the incorporation of branded goods or services within content that is usually devoid of advertisements (Zebrowski & MacDonald, 2007). This characte-ristic concerned the presence in the video of clear images of brand names in a manner that reinforces certain values of the nation or product coun-try image (PCI). For example, these may be images of teenagers using highly-technical brand name products (value of technical ability) or a German tourism advertisement with characters driving BMWs. Technological Features: Technology-related images, such as, for ex-ample, of citizens using the latest electronic devices, or shots of urban cen-ters bustling with commuters on a modern, high-speed train, suggesting heavy national investment in technology (José I. Rojas-Méndez, 2009).

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Furthermore the videos were aditionally categoriezed in:

References to peace and safety: Include any means of security mea-sures to ensure safety, or a general atmosphere of harmony in regard to people‘s coexistenceReferences to urban space: Inlcudes typical urban features such as parks, streets, city-scape, city-structrure or urban activities like shop-ping, museum-visits or clubbing.


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Tabelle1

Seite 1

2011 / updates unknown / status May 2015

Economic wealth

Local Accent

Political Reference

Technological features

Reference to urban space

egypt.travel.com (Cairo selected)

No

Even though economic wealth is portrayed occasionally, the general tone and attitude of the website is not stressing on luxury or exclusive aspects.

No

People are hardly to find neither in picture, nor in text. Especially in comparison to the videos available, the lack of locals is evident.

No

Tahrir square is introduced as the site, where the revolution of 2011 took place. Apart from this surprising comment, no political reference is given.

Significant Product Placement

No

Apart form sights and places, no brands (product or corporate) are placed.

No

not noticeable

Reference to peace and safety

No

not noticeable

Yes

Various urban features are introduced and additionally explained through different maps. The visitor receives a broad range of impressions of Cairo's form and structure.

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Tabelle1

Seite 2

Year 2010 Year 2014 or 2015

Videos (uploaded on youtube and facebook)

No

No strong notion stresses on economical wealth connected to Egypt. However, the tourists portrayed which seem to be wealthy and to enjoy a good comfort in most cases. Still, attributes of richness and luxury are limited to images of boats and expensive hotels occasionally.

No

Agian,

Yes

Locals are rare in all the clips, yet they exist in small situations. An old calligraphy writer represents local craft and mystic ferry tail; a coachmen drives the tourists and represents original, rural life; and several smiling servants portray Egyptian hospitality and service culture. All of them wear traditional clothes and practise old jobs, with the intention to represent a true Egyptian element.

Yes

Again, locals are limited to the same calligrapher, coachmen and servants in local clothing, representing friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Newly introduced were a group of Nubian musicians, which are the embodiment of the cultural richness and fascination of Upper Egypt.

No

Not noticeable

No

Not noticeable

No

Apart from sights and places, no brands (product or corporate) are placed.

No

Apart from sights and places, no brands (product or corporate) are placed.

No

not noticeable

No

not noticeable

No

not noticeable

No

not noticeable

Yes

Cairo is present and displayed through nighlife, clubs, bars and shopping malls; Alexandria's cornice is portrayed as well.

No

Urban features are not part of the videos.

Table 2.06.: Video-content-analysis categorisation


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The analysis led to a deeper understanding of the communication strategies and intentions behind the official tourism promotion. The differentiation according to release dates makes it possible to understand changes, which might be a res-ponse to the tourism crisis in Egypt since 2011. Generally, it is noticeable that the promotion is highly focussing on the two main tourism products: sun & sea and culture. In most of the videos, both are presented in a strong combination which indicates, that tourism in Egypt offers both at the same time. Obviously, the tourism crisis, which was a consequence of the political changes, affected the communication strategy especially in regard to the capital. Cairo, being very much in the centre of political incidents and riots, was subjec-ted to particular travel warnings again and again. Consequently, urban images from the capital or other cities were only used in the clips before 2011 – especially Cairo was displayed through Khan el Khalili for example. In those videos publis-hed in 2014 or 2015, Cairo is excluded completely – the videos are mainly limited to images of the sun & sea product of the Red Sea, and the cultural product of regions around Assuan & Luxor.

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Interpreting the imaging of Cairo through theofficialvideoandwebsiteA small selection of images, either moving or still, appear in the website and the videos regularly and most prominent. They create the strongest visual descrip-tion of Cairo and highlight the way, how the city should be imagined by tourists. Furthermore, they give certain attributions to the city, which can be described as follows:

Metropolis of urban greenThe first interactive panorama picture offers the view from the Cairo's television-tower, looking south towards Rhoda Island (see figure 2.12). A big button of-fers a 360 degree photographic panorama-tour, to complete the impression. It shows the island Zamalek, which is enthralling with massive greenery, consisting of trees along the roads and wide green fields of sport and leisure facilities. The island, that is framed by the majestic Nile and bathed in the romantic sunset, ap-pears like a green lung of the city. Traffic, being a major impression when walking in Cairo, was included very small only. Beyond the scope of the Nile, on the other side of the river, the areas Downtown, Munira or Garden City and el-Dokki lye under a gently blue sky, coloured in a warm yellow-red shimmer. The grey colou-red façades of the buildings, that are so typical for the city, are digitally beautified through the clever use of photographic tools like sunlight, distance, sharpness and un-sharpness, perspective and the decision of the view point. Visitors might understand and memorize the dry city with the privatized relaxation places, as a generously green urban structure with wide open spaces to enjoy the nature.

Figure 2.12 View from the Cairo-tower (egypt.travel.com, 2015)


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Metropolis of Islamic heritageIslamic heritage is mainly represented through two images, the citadel (see fi-gure 2.13) and the Al Azhar Mosque (see figure 2.14). The latter one is portrayed through the promotion-videos, where it only appears in the fraction of a moment, when its Minaret and outer walls are screened in blurry images. It rather repre-sents itself, but more the general impression of an anonymous Mosque, which is embedded in oriental streets, hosting an enjoyable night-life. Its illumination gives a mystical hint of a ferry-tail from "1001 nights" that could be experienced. Showing Islamic buildings like the Al Azhar Mosque in harmonic combination with vivid night-life and western styled women, adds a notion of unexpected to-lerance to the city. The website offers another interactive panorama, showing the inner court of Salah al Din's citadel. The visitor can turn around digitally and let the eyes fly along the massive wall, including the impressive entrance gate, over the mosque and the citadel itself. It is presented in a clean and neat museum atmosphere, including few tourists, who are exploring the site in certain distance. The view is fully enclosed by the outer wall of the area, which limits the impression to the monument only. In doing so, the photograph does not give any feeling or relation to the citadel's position to the city. No glimpse is offered from the surrounding - neither the Mu'attam hill, nor the historic city or the Dar el Salam area leave the tiniest trace on the picture.

Figure 2.13 Interactive panorama - Citadel of Saladin (egypt.travel.com, 2015)

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Metropolis of oriental charmSharea al Moaiz, the atmospheric, ancient street in medieval Cairo is being por-trayed through a panorama photography as well. The vibrant site, full of souvenir shops, museums and touchable history, was upgraded and beatified just recently within a big project, in cooperation with the Aga Khan trust fund for culture. It is nowadays a highly attractive site, that brings together both unique historic urban fabric in good condition and entertainment for tourism requirements. The image displays the old and majestic buildings and gives an impression of the structure, by showing the street suite. The amount of visitors and street vendors, that is shown here does not give a real indication about the hectic and noisy atmosphe-re, which is typical for the street. Furthermore, it is evident, that the highly con-sume oriented souvenir-economy is barely represented – only one street vendor is decently situated on the side walk. The impressive architecture received the photographers main attention. The friendly sun creates a pleasant light and sha-dow situation for the eye – a surprising decision from the photographic point of view, because the whole area is famous by night especially.

Figure 2.14 Interactive panorama - Moaiz street (egypt.travel.com, 2015)


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Metropolis of splendid parksShowing the Al Azhar park from one of the main paths with a little artificial wa-ter stream in the middle, this panorama describes a perfect piece of tempting urban greenery (see figure 2.15). Aga Khans prestige project, started in the early 1980's (Aga Khan trust fund for culture, 2005) was part of a huge upgrading process in the informal area, that surrounds the park nowadays. The flowerbeds are in accurate patterns, which harmonise perfectly with the refreshing trees, the lighting system and the even garbage bins. Surprisingly, the photography was precisely taken from a spot that allows only very limited view beyond the park – the impressive citadel can be seen in far distance, being one of the visual focus points offered by the visible axis of the park's structure. Apart from this, it is only possible to slightly guess the cityscape that can be detected in very far distance. Experiencing the site through a walk enables the visitor to take very different and interesting perspectives on the city. Especially the old Islamic city that merges together with the neighboured informal area, or the city of the dead on the other side of the highway represent a unique and broad view on Egypt's capital – a perspective that is obviously neglected intentionally in the digital representation.

Figure 2.15 Interactive panorama - inside the Al Azhar park (egypt.travel.com, 2015)

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Metropolis of illuminated nightsA panorama view from the middle of the Sixth of October bridge, was chosen to give an impression of Cairo at night (see figure 2.16). A fascinating heaven of deep yellow and red late sunset gives the stage for the cityscape. The high houses stand isolated and little impressive on the riverbank. Poetic light reflects on the Nile's surface and some high priced restaurant-boats are standing silently on the side. Remarkable are the empty roads, creates the image of a ghost city. Seeing the usually highly congested bridge bare any traffic, gives an unreal impression to people who perceived the place in real life. The panorama creates a romantic Nile impression, which invites to have a walk and to stop off in one of the fancy restaurant-boats along the river, from where one can enjoy the scenery.

Figure 2.16 Interactive panorama - Bridge over the Nile (egypt.travel.com, 2015)


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Metropolis next to the PyramidsOf course, the Pyramids of Giza are imaged with a panorama as well (see figure 2.17). The picture was taken from the entrance of the plateau, in front of the Sphinx. The three pyramids are standing majestic in front of the blue sky with white clouds. Moving the angle, gives a view on the rest of the inner part of the fenced plateau. Again, similar to the panorama of the Azhar Park, the picture gives only very little chance to see beyond the area's borders. The position was chosen, to narrow the impressions on the monuments and the very surrounding within the fence only. Giza, the dense urban fabric that came incredibly close to the Pyramid plateau and Cairo itself, is a fundamental part of the view that one has, when visiting the monuments. The typical red brick buildings in a dense accumulation are a particular visual characteristic of the informal areas in Cairo and form wide parts of the cityscape.

Figure 2.17 Interactive panorama - Pyramids of Giza (egypt.travel.com, 2015)

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Metropolisofnight-lifeWithin the video depiction of Cairo, reference to the city's night-life appears oc-casionally. A young, well dressed, non-Egyptian tourist couple strolls through the streets of Khan el Khalili and enjoys the vivid atmosphere, before they join a clas-sy party, taking place most probably in a rooftop-bar in Dokki or Zamalek (see figure 2.17.2). By highlighting a lively party on the list of opportunities, Cairo is presenting unexpected elements, which contradict to some extend with common ideas about the city. The city, which is understood mainly as a cultural product from the tourism perspective, tries to add another layer to its image.

Figure 2.17.2 Image from video - nightlife (youtube.com, 2015)


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MetropolisofserviceandhospitalityA common quality shown repeatedly throughout almost all the videos, is a high standard in service and extraordinary, natural hospitality (see figure 2.18). To prove that, different situations mostly taking place in Khan el Khalili, were crea-ted. A motive used often are different male tea-servants, who fulfil their job with the most friendly perfection and vivid spirit possible. Often the act of doing such service, is combined with an artistic show, or some magic tricks to enthral and entertain the client. Always, the servants appear in neat and clean, traditional clothing with bright colours. The ambient is often rustic, but always clean, char-ming and welcoming. Especially regarding the hygienic standards, the created image is not reflecting a common street-café or street-restaurant. Both, people and facilities are idealized to a strong amount, in order to beautify reality and create a super-class experience.

Figure 2.18 Image from video - hospitality (youtube.com, 2015)

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Metropolis of shoppingA topic that appears occasionally in the video portrayal of Cairo is shopping (see figure 2.19). In that regard, modern shopping malls are imaged as places of expe-rience and joy. Mostly women or young, attractive, western couples are strolling though the mall's alleys and seem to be overwhelmed by the variety of goods and the classy presentation. The atmosphere is usually clean, sterile and valuable. Huge amounts of shopping bags are a common symbol that represents variety and irresistible temptation.

Figure 2.19 Image from video- shopping (youtube.com, 2015)


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Metropolisofmysteryandstory-tellingAs a kind of story-frame, an old calligrapher is often used to start and end the video‘s narration. The friendly looking person seems to write down the story, that everyone wants to dive in. Going along with the symbolical imaginary of the Pha-raohnic heritage, the calligrapher adds a layer of mystical temptation and creates the charm of "1001 nights", which can be experienced in Cairo (see figure 2.20).

Figure 2.20 Image from video- story-telling (youtube.com, 2015)

Core tourism products of Cairo as portrayed

Culture

Urbanity

Pharaohnic Heritage

Cityscape

Islamic Heritage

Parks

Coptic Heritage

Leisure

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2.3.2.SummarizingCairo’sofficiallypromotedtourism place brand identity

Grodach (2009) argues, in most cases the brand communication stresses on overwhelmingly positive images, which naturally excludes plenty of aspects of the place‘s reality. The analysis shows, that this applies in case of Egypt and Cairo as well. The created brand identity is purely and selectively loaded with adorable images and descriptions. Based on the analysis of the officially published videos and internet site, the official brand identity's six elements of Egypt's tourism pro-motion can be described as follows (see also figure 2.21):

Brand cultureBrand culture tells the unique and typical aspects of local culture, that form the brand. It refers to sectors of economy, society, urbanity and so on, that particu-larly create the space. The destination Cairo is understood mainly as a cultural product for tourism. It offers a huge variety of historical sights, which are consi-dered as a USP for the Egyptian tourism. Consequently, its portrayal through the official tourism entity stresses mainly on cultural aspects with a strong focus on religious and Pharaohnic heritage. The strongest focus lies on the architectural monuments of Islam, followed by those of Coptic Christianity and Pharaohnic times. These categories are presented in the strongest way in terms of number of recommended or mentioned sites. Furthermore, the available promotion mate-rial includes so called modern Cairo: Wellness, Nile cruises, Nature and Water activities, which receive comparably small attention. Most of those aspects either take place outside of the city itself, or do not stand for a unique Cairo experience, but are rather exchangeable. The main brand culture created for Cairo through the official tourism entity, is clearly derived from religious as well as ancient ar-chitecture and heritage. The city is portrayed as a cultural melting pot of Islamic domination in combination with remarkable Coptic and Pharaohnic influences, which goes hand in hand with certain references to habits and traditions like local food (Koshari), beverages (Karkadeé) or particular means of transportation like carriage-rides and Feluka-tours on the Nile. Furthermore, the references to dancing and clubbing often given in diffe-rent videos, indicates a strong attempt to promote Cairo as a good place for night-life activities. Interestingly, the quality “night-life” is rather untypical for wide parts of the city and the Egyptian society, whereas the pride and omnipresence of Islamic, Coptic and Pharaonic monuments is very evident.


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Brand characterThe brand's character is the result of a complex network of information which go far beyond the scope of any branding campaign. It includes especially the in-ternational perception of a place, which highly involves political dimensions and the position on the international political and economical arena. Policies and po-litical incidents shape the brand character and represent a very important aspect of branding, as Simon Anholt argues (2007). Nevertheless, a certain amount of characterisation is noticeable through the official tourism promotion too. Egypt's characterisation for tourism is strongly connected to the two main tourism pro-ducts: culture and sun & sea. In doing so, the official promotion often stresses strong promises of unique and unforgettable beaches and history. While using big and proud words, the place's portrait is free of any self-doubts and irony. It is obvious, that the tourism promotion avoids reference to the political situation or the status of security in the country. The focus of the promotion lies clearly on the aspects which are currently easy to sell. Consequently, Cairo, being the centre of political change and related violence, is not portrayed in a prominent position in the tourism promotion. The capital's image is kept rather decent and shy – any mean of conflict was neglected.

Brand personalityAssociating a place with human characteristics is an abstract and individual pro-cess. Experiencing a place will add a whole set of descriptive words to the urban imaginary, as a result of real interaction. Most probably a place will be remem-bered “friendly” or “welcoming”, if that is how the local people were perceived by the tourists. Such “real life” experience are considered the strongest brand messages. The branding attempts of tourism-entities always try to attribute com-parable, positive adjectives to places. The campaign egypt.travel attributes and personalizes Cairo, its sites, ho-tels, parks or monuments with words such as: vibrant, exhilarating, exotic, fas-cinating, welcoming, incredible, stunning, charming, beautiful, pleasant, lovely and so on. Especially the video portrayal uses big words to describe the experi-ence one will have, when diving into Egypt's past: “the most incredible place on earth”, “the cradle of civilisation”, “where it all began”, “the greatest outdoor mu-seum in the world” etc. give an impression about the strong superlatives in use to picture Egypt and its capital. Generally, the descriptions, used to personalize Cairo, tend to drastically overemphasize and beautify the given reality.

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Figure 2.21 Brand communcation and positioning strategy of egypt.travel (detail from Risitano, M. 2010 with modifications


Brand name Thinking of Masr, is thinking of both at the same time Egypt and Cairo. “Egypt is Cairo and Cairo is Egypt” - considering this saying, which is common ground for Egyptians and those who know Egypt well, a strong and inseparable connection between the country and its capital becomes evident. Nevertheless, the authori-ties rather neglected the immense importance of Cairo for the country. Its posi-tion and rank in the whole website's communication is just equal to the various other possible destinations presented. In giving Cairo only a small share within the portrait of Egypt, the effort to create and strengthen the brand name “Cairo” is rather weak.

Brand logos / symbols and sloganEgypt – where it all begins is the only slogan presented in the campaign. Accor-ding to Pike (2005) slogans are widely understood as a needed formulation of the place‘s brand strategy. As described, through the intensive use of panorama photographs, the city is visually attributed as a place of history, perfect weather at day and night, green spaces and usable river sites, monuments and a charming old city struc-ture. The photographs become symbols for a main message, which is communi-cated – they are the urban imaginary, that the authorities intend to create.

culture, sun & sea

friendly, hospitable, mystical, amazing, beautiful, astonishing

„Ägypten, wo alles beginnt“

Kairo / Ägypten

Sea, Nile, desert,monuments, Hieroglyphes...

unique, diverse,„must see“

Brand Identity

Brand Awareness /Knowledge about the

destination

egypt.travelofficial branding entity

(potential) tourist


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2.3.2.Otheractor'simagingofCairo

Tourism is an economical sector, that's branding is diffuse and hard to control, because of the enormous amount of professional actors within the tourism in-dustry, which are involved in the image creation for places. Companies big and small, settled in all kinds of business models such as internet based, b2b or b2c are involved in the competition of attracting customers. They all create an image of the place, by deciding how to portray and to communicate the places. Egypt, being an attractive destination for people all over the world, finds itself portrayed and imaged in an unwieldy number of promotion materials, advertisement cam-paigns, special offers and so on. There is no common agreement on a particular strategy how to portray the country, but an open field of possibilities. Of course, certain agreements exist naturally, since places and activities available are limi-ted and equally attractive for most of the potential target audiences. The pyra-mids are valid symbols and photographic objects to portray Egypt to people in Japan, Germany or Argentina. Nevertheless, apart from that, a coherent strategy to convey a strong and unified image seems pretty much impossible (see figure 2.22-2.26).

Figure 2.22 ETI‘s start-web-page, highlights the focus that lies on Red Sea holidays. (ETI.de 2015)

Figure 2.23 erlebe Ägypten & Jordanien‘s start-web-page, stresses on individual cultural experi-ence (erlebeaegypten.de 2015)

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Figure 2.24 Egypt-pur‘s start-web-page, highlights individual tours and uses uncomon imges (egypt-pur.de 2015)

Figure 2.25 Helios reisen‘s start-web-page, high-lights educational tours and uses famous cultural images (heliosreisen.de 2015)

Figure 2.26 Halloreisen‘s start-web-page, focusses on leisure by using images of hotels and relaxation (halloreisen.de 2015)


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2.4.Unintendedinfluences-a critical dimension for place brands

As described before, the brand creation is exposed to various influences beyond official strategies and image visions. In fact, every detail that somehow refers to a place, contributes to the shaping of the particular place imagination. The weight of the detail within a person's place imagination is highly depending on the image that a person already holds. It is assumed, that the more somebody knows or be-lieves about a place, the less new information will affect the image held. On the other hand, a little detail might be a strong image creator, if the person's imagi-nation about that certain place is small or not existing (Anholt, 2007). All the influences on the brand creation, which go beyond an official bran-ding strategy are summarized as unintended influences. It includes all those as-pects, that contribute to the brand image, without a deliberate intention to do so. Of course, certain brand influences might even be intended to do harm the brand. Simon Anholt (2007) calls it belligerent branding, which implies the deliberate act of downgrading another place. He illustrates the argument by mentioning the process of ranking a country according to its financial and economical situation. What became a common practice of rating agencies like Standart and Poors, is widely considered a valuable guideline to evaluate the trustworthiness of places. Even states use such judgements often, to calculate the risk of dealing with a particular other state. Many states face severe consequences for their economical development through it. Unintended branding influences are an omnipresent and relevant cate-gory a place brand has to cope with. They can be differentiated according to the following categories:

2.4.1.Wordofmouth/wordofmouse

The sharing of opinions by personal friends, colleges, relatives or any other per-son is a strong influence on the creation of an urban imaginary. It is argued, that a friend's recommendation for something, but particularly a friend's advise against something, is one of the strongest creators of an individual perception. The huge variety of communication and opinion sharing platforms, offered in the internet gives the stage for every individual connected to the world wide web. Each person can verbalize his or her memories of holidays done, discuss and

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90

interact in the digital publicity with every other user. Their ambitions might be of simple nature, such as discussing or chatting on holiday. Nevertheless, they become co-creator of a place imagination for those, who consume their report – especially, if the consumer has a rather blank page in mind regarding the place, it is likely that the descriptions, gained this way will, form an imagination on their own. So, everybody can become an actor in shaping the perception, imagination and in consequence the reputation of a place, even though there might be no intention in contributing to the brand. Of course, every report on holiday expe-riences, either good or bad, is a strong communicator, in or against the favour of a place brand. The online platform Tripadvisor (tripadvisor.com) for example, is a strong tool to exchange holiday experiences and share recommendation regarding ho-tels, sites, sights, activities, guides etc. worldwide. 655.142 assessments are de-dicated to whole Egypt. Cairo and surrounding has at the same time an amount of 57.032 descriptions (status April 2015). People share various information and rank experiences according to their satisfaction. Others often respond to these judgements by asking questions or appreciating the comments. It became com-mon, that hotels etc. ask their clients to comment in tripadvisor. According to tripadvisor, more than 75 million assessments are collected in the website, which is visited by 60 million users monthly. Through the cooperation with other web-sites, approximately 740 million people use the tripadvisor's service each month. It is noticeable, that the vast majority of the comments on places are positive and enthusiastic. Nevertheless, people do use the chance to criticise – harsh judge-ments and warnings can be found, which seem to have the intention to prevent others from making the same bad experience in a particular place. Facebook, being one of the most common tools to share information, has a strong meaning for place branding as well. Especially in groups, dedicated to certain topics in regard to places, people share opinions in an almost uncont-rollable manner. According to a counting (status May 2015), 90 groups in Ger-man language exist that focus on Egypt. 68 of them make tourism or tourism related topics the subject of the discussion. Snorkelling, diving, sightseeing and beach activities are found the most among those. Apart from tourism, a smaller amount of groups tackle topics such as politics, culture, business and jobs and other minor aspects. Cairo is the focus of four groups among the 90. Again, users become active contributors to the creation of an imagination, by posting com-ments and pictures, which are an unlimited source of information, far from an official branding strategy.

BRANDING CAIRO

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Figure 2.27 Demonstrations against the visit of the Egyptian President al Sisi in Germany (screenshot from tagesschau.de, June 2015)

2.4.2.Themediadepiction

As described before, media plays a major role within the creation of a place ima-gination. Often it represents the only source of information for foreign audience. A high amount of negative content is the nature of the news – crisis, war, terror, revolution, violence, bankruptcy etc. are dominant topics, that appear in a con-stant flow. Positive news are rather rare in the media depiction. Especially the countries of Middle East and North Africa receive a strong, and mostly unfor-tunate media attention. Egypt looks back on years of political change, which certainly were the main issue debated in the media since 2011. Apart from the highly appreciated attempt to introduce democratic standards in Egypt, the media depiction was strongly dominated by critical reports about brutal violence in demonstration, suppression of free opinion, killed people, putsch, death sentences, military con-trol or harassed women. Being considered as the most important factor of stabili-ty in the region and a reliable partner for Germany since decades, Egypt received


92

Figure 2.28 Protesting Egyptian during the press conference of Merkel and al Sisi in Berlin (spiegel.de, June 2015)

BRANDING CAIRO

93

an extra strong attention from German media in the time of the Arab revolution. After an en-thusiastic start, the course of incidents in Egypt were widely received with a certain attitude of disappointment in German news. Both, the rise and fall of Moslem Brotherhood for example, was perceived and displayed often as a misun-derstood idea of democracy in Egypt. Hisham Zazou, Egyptian Minister of Tourism, calls the small visitor numbers in Egypt a response to news-headlines and travel-bans. They move to-gether in a zigzag curve - up and down with the tone of the report. Until now, four years after the Revoluti-on started, the tone used to speak about Egypt sounds concerned and critical. The incidents which bring Egypt in the German news and media are still mainly negative and problema-tic – sample checks in Germany's five most vi-sited online newspapers were piloted to get a glimpse of the media image dedicated to Egypt in Germany (see table 2.07). In order to get a glimpse of the moment, archives of Bild.de, Spiegel online, Focus online, ntv.de and welt.de were scanned for the term “Ägypten”, and the latest 20 results of each were categorised according to the appropriate key words poli-tics in Egypt, politics connected to Egypt, ter-ror, refugees, holiday and other (status 15 May, 2015). Through this sample check, it was noti-ceable, that Egypt's current media depiction is mainly unpleasant in character, which implies a huge burden for the country and its brand. Especially Cairo, Egypt's heart and soul, finds itself often in the focus of the negative report by being strongly connected to the most urgent issues of the country.


94

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96

2.4.3.PublicDiplomacy

According to Simon Anholt's (2007) concept of Competitive Identity, public di-plomacy is an essential aspect of place branding, which needs to be understood as such and treated with the appropriate care. He argues, that through means of public diplomacy, places can create a strong bond of trust, which will strengthen the brand strongly. Nevertheless, public diplomacy is often neglected within the branding attempts of places. In this cases of lacking awareness, the implications of public diplomacy become an unintended element of the brand creation. Re-searchers like Anholt recommend strongly to take public diplomacy into consi-deration, when thinking of place branding strategies. He uses the United States Information Agency's definition from the early 1960s to define it as:

“the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond tra-ditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups in one country with tho-se of another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of inter-cultural communications” (Anholt, S. 2007 p.12).

A strong mean of public diplomacy, which reflects the given definition, is the existence of active and vivid foundations, that one country runs in another coun-try. The goals of such cross-national partnerships are for example: create and maintain a visibility in the particular host country; communicate values and vi-sions of the guest; enable cultural exchange between both countries; support po-litical, cultural and social processes in the host country; strengthen economical partnership and ease business between both countries; create and maintain trust between both countries, which supports the creation of a positive reputation. Egypt and Germany share a long history in that respect – different dimen-sions of public diplomacy exist and many of them look back on a long history. The Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (German exchange service) DAAD, operates in Egypt since 55 years and contributes to cultural and educational ex-change between Egypt and Germany. Furthermore, Goethe Institut, Hans Seidel Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Deutsches Wissenschaftszentrum, Humbolt Universität, Technische Universität Berlin, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Deutsches Ar-

BRANDING CAIRO

97

Governmental representationGerman Embassy CairoConsulate

Foundations in culture and education

Deutsches WissenschaftszentrumGoethe InstituteHans Seidel Stiftung Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Heinrich Böll StiftungKonrad Adenauer Stiftung(expelled)Deutscher AkademischerAustauschdienst

Science and research(including partnership-programs)

German University CairoTU BerlinTU MünchenDeutsches Archäologisches InstitutFraunhoferUniversität MarburgUniversity of Stuttgart

IndustryDeutsche AuslandshandelskammerMercedes BenzLufthansaSiemens

Othersreligious communities

Governmental representationEgyptian Embassy Berlin- Cultural Bureau- Press Bureau- Egyptian Commercial ServiceConsulate

Science and research (including partnership-programs)

Ain Shams UniversityCairo UniversityHelwan University

Othersreligious communities

Figure 2.29 Different examples of Public Diplomacy between Egypt and Germany

German representations in Egypt

Egyptian representations in Germany


98

chäologisches Institut, KfW Bank or Friedrich Naumann Stiftung are examples for German organisations working in Egypt. Mostly, they are engaged in cultural, political and educational projects. Having a diplomatic network, Germany repre-sents itself multidimensional and ambitious in Egypt. It offers Egyptians many points of contact with Germany, and it helps Germany to represent itself. Fur-thermore, it strengthens its reputation on different levels. According to Christian Melchert from Deutsches Wisseschaftszentrum Cairo, many of the German foun-dations in Egypt try not to create a one-side profit situation for Germany, but to generate a base of representation for Egypt in Germany as well. Especially trough various exchange programs coordinated by German foundations for example, Egyptians receive the change to study or to write PhD in Germany, which makes them “ambassadors” for their country. Consequently, Egypt benefits to a remar-kable extend from German public diplomacy programs in Egypt. Nevertheless, Egyptian interests should be advocated by Egyptian organisations in Germany as well, in order to realize own strategies. Even though both countries Egypt and Germany are keen in stressing the strong bond and importance of the diverse relations between each other, it is obvious that the latter one has a much stronger presence and activeness in the partner-country (see figure 2.29). The Egyptian representation in Germany is comparatively small. Only few attempts have been undertaken to get Germans in touch with Egypt. Apart form the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin, the Egyptian tourism office, cultural office and the commercial mission represent the only ex-amples for Egyptian projects in Germany. Bernd Erbel, former German ambas-sador in Egypt, explains that they are not comparable to German foundations in Egypt – there is no noticeable widespread impact, which affects Egyptian affairs strongly. He recommends to enlarge the scope of Egyptian presence and to build a stronger and solid scaffold of multi-layered representations in Germany.

BRANDING CAIRO

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Figure 2.30.: Brand communcation and positioning strategy surrounded by unintended brand elements (detail from Risitano, M. 2010 with modifications by Schopf, G. 2015)

culture, sun & sea


„Ägypten, wo alles beginnt“

Kairo / Ägypten



Brand Identity

Brand Awareness /Knowledge about the

destination


(potential) tourist

Diversity of unofficial actors and information


Area of (un)intended brand creation

refugees

Violence

Crisis

terrortravel alerts

instability

Protest

Lack of justice

culture

2.5.Chapter‘sconclusion

As highlighted in this chapter, the brand of a place is a complex structure, that is being communicated mainly through six channels: tourism, corporate & product brands, investment, culture, people and policies (Anholt, 2010). Mostly, tourism is the “loudest voice” among them. Nevertheless, to shape a holisitc place brand, it is necessary to communicate through all these six channels – the more wide a place brand is positioned in all of them, the more resistive it will be in the case of a crisis. Tourism plays a major role for the economy of Egypt, which mainly bases its tourism products on its unique culture and the all-year availability of sun & sea along the Red Sea. Obviously, the recent political crisis resulted in a certain mistrust in the country's status of safety. A strong decrease in tourist arrivals was the highly problematic consequence. Fortunately, the situation is in a constant improvement and makes tourism actors feel optimistic about the businesses' de-velopment. Due to the high importance of tourism for the Egyptian economy, it receives a strong attention within the official brand creation of the country, which is done though egypt.travel, the official entity of the Tourism Ministry. Mainly

CHAPTER'S CONCLUSION

100

through the website and a variety of videos, a particular image is being created, which mainly highlights the two strategic tourism products culture and sun & sea. Cairo, being centre of the globally discussed crisis, is widely neglected, or strongly limited to a few aspects in this promotion attempts nowadays. Through promoting tourism, an important contribution to the brand of Cairo and Egypt is created. It consists of a variety of elements, of which the brand identity is among the most important. Risitano (2008) names brand culture, brand personality, brand character, brand slogan, brand logo and brand name, to describe different parts of a brand's identity. The process of Cairo's brand identification stresses on certain attributes, which show, how the city should be imaged by tourists. The clear focus lies on oriental, pharaonic and generally historical elements, which are enriched with hospitality, originality and friendliness (see figure 2.30). A major challenge of place branding lies in the uncontrollable amount of influencing aspects. It is not possible to align the big range of actors in the field of tourism under one strategy. Over more, and even more problematic is the huge amount of unintended brand influences - information, which shape a place brand without the deliberate intention to do so. Those are communicated through all kinds of media, especially through the news. The news depiction of Egypt is mainly connected to crisis, violence or injustice. These negative aspects can become major creators of a place imagination held by people, which makes them a strong factor of harm for the place brand. Therefore, a place needs to be aware of the variety of impacts affecting its own brand and try hard, to make the-se aspects support the brand strategy.

BRANDING CAIRO

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102

German tourist‘s:brand awareness /place imagination /place experience /brand expectation

103

Figure 3.01 Tourist experiencing the Pyramids at Giza (egyptianstreets.com, 2015)

104

BRAND AWARENESS - SURVEYS

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3.Brandawareness-surveys

The intention to gain an understanding of the place imaginary, held by German tourists, was approached through two different, quantitative surveys. Both were mainly held online, targeting Germans in Germany. The first survey addressed Germans, who visited Egypt in the previous years as tourists. They were approa-ched via different channels such as facebook groups, which discuss holiday in Egypt. Furthermore, a “snowball-system” was used to spread the survey – one participant sent the survey to other people, who meet the requirements of being a former Egypt-tourist. The first attempt to reach German tourists in Cairo failed, because it was not possible to collect sufficient results for two reasons: 1) German tourists were hard to find 2) they were surprisingly unmotivated to answer sur-veys. Adding the online-survey was a successful decision to cope with the appea-ring problems. The surveys aimed mainly towards six issues, which were: 1) the tourist's travel plans, including the places and sights he or she wants to visit and the ge-neral motivation he or she had to come to Egypt; 2) the research and knowledge level held by the tourist regarding Egypt's history, culture, geography, poli-tics, music, goods production etc.; 3) the tourist's evaluation of the place, in-cluding the people, character of the country, feeling during the journey etc.; 4) the differentiation between expectations held before coming to the place, and the faced impressions after experiencing the place in reality; 5) the tourist's concerns regarding safety and the hesitation level connected to the idea of ha-ving holiday in a country, that is still affected by the various consequences of recent political changes; 6) the share of Cairo among the visited destinations. The first quantitative survey included an unconventional, experimental approach. It aimed at understanding the dimensions of Egypt existing in the

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minds of Germans, by asking them to express their imagination in a rather crea-tive way. It was requested to write an imaginary travel report:

Stellen Sie sich vor, sie berichten von einem Ägypten-Urlaub, der gerade frisch hinter Ihnen liegt. Beschreiben Sie diesen, so gut Sie können. Als ge-dankliche Stütze – sie können beschreiben: wo Sie waren / was Sie gesehen haben / wie es Ihnen gefallen hat / was gestört hat / welche Eindrücke am stärksten waren / was Sie überrascht hat / was Sie gehört oder gerochen haben / wie Sie sich gefühlt haben / ob Sie es noch einmal machen würden / ob Sie Angst oder Unbehagen hatten / ob Sie es empfehlen würden / woran es Sie erinnert hat / wie Sie mit den Menschen zurechtkamen / wie Ihnen das Essen geschmeckt hat... (online survey one, 2015)

The participants projected a pure place imagination, based on different influ-ences but excluding real experience in the text. Still, they were partly able to write proper and detailed stories, including: geographical details, information on climate, descriptions of interaction with local people and ways in dealing with their mentality, portrayals of physical details, cuisine's smell and taste, tourism related activities or problems of different kind. Many related stron-gly to the involvement of all senses, especially when referring to the tyring heat, the stressful traffic in Cairo or the bazaars and markets with many alien scents. The task gave many levels of information about their place imaginati-on, far beyond listing hard facts such as places and sights. As described, it of-fers the room for the participant to involve emotional dimensions, opinions or ideas. 41 of 71 persons fulfilled the survey properly and offered valid results. The task to write the holiday narration caused the high drop-out rate. Furthermore, the survey asked them to answer similar questions to those of the survey two. Still, it was not possible to ask the full set of equal questions in both sur-vey, because the pre-conditions of the participants were so different – one group has no real experience with the place, whereas the other group has them. Conse-quently, the first group could mainly be asked about assumptions, whereas the other group was more confronted with questions on real experience.


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3.1.Analysingthesurveys

Thenarrationofsurveyone

In order to use the outcome of the fictional text, it was necessary to categorize the aspects, which were extracted from the participants place imagination. Every aspect that was mentioned was counted. Each was only counted once per text, regardless how often it was mentioned in it. The texts have shown big differences in terms of length and depth of description. Some participants wrote very short stories with a low level of details:

„Ich war bei d n Pyramiden, bin Schiff gefahren und habe abendslecker Tee getrunken und Shisha geraucht.“

Others seemed to enjoy the task a lot and included a great amount of information and creativity in their narration:

„Wir waren in der Wüste und haben die Pyramiden von Giseh ange-schaut, es war noch nicht so warm, aber sehr windig und dadurch stau-big, deshalb konnte man leider gar nicht so weit schauen. Und obwohl der Tag gar nicht so gut geeignet war für diesen Ausflug, waren schreck-lich viele Touristen da und für die Führungen musste man leider doch lange anstehen (wir hatten gehofft, dem mit schlechtem Wetter zu entge-hen). Aber: dafür hatte man dann auch Pyramiden von Innen gesehen und agyptische Tempel und Hiroglyphen an Ort und Stelle. Das war ei-gentlich wie überall an touristischen Orten: schön zu sehen, aber nicht so schön, da zu sein. Kairo selbst fühlte sich nicht besonders postrevolutio-när an, nur trubelig, aber interessant und spannend verbaut. Aber: sehr viele Menschen und beinahe noch mehr Autos. Holla. Am meisten hatte ich mich auf die Märkte gefreut, aber auch ein bisschen davor gegruselt, weil ich nicht sicher war, ob ich mit Englisch da überhaupt weiterkom-men würde oder nur mit Händen und Füßen. Ging aber alles und oft genug auch mit Englisch und ein paar gelernten Floskeln. Und dann überhaupt: das Essen! Ich hatte mich enorm darauf gefreut und wir sind wirklich nicht entäuscht worden. Hummus, Falafel, irgendwelche unde-finierbaren Pasten - hmm! Touristenfallen gab‘s da zum Glück nicht und jeder Imbissstand war einfach, aber vertrauenswürdig. Ans Meer sind

ANALYSING THE SURVEYS

108

wir auch gefahren, weil wir Alexandria sehen wollten. Mit öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln war das nicht so leicht, aber schlussendlich sind wir an-gekommen. Die Ausgrabungen vor Ort zu finden war dann auch wieder nicht einfach, das Museum eher schlicht und... ohne englischsprachige Erläuterungen. Mist. Die Ausstellungsstücke waren aber prima: Holz-planken von versunkenen Schiffen, viele Bronzebeschläge und sogar ein paar Goldschatzüberreste (leider keine goldene Rüstung von Alexander dem Großen). Außerdem eine sehr schöne Ton-Büste und eine badende Venus aus Marmor und eine große Keramikabteilung. Abends waren wir am Hafen essen, der war - wie leider in vielen Bereichen des Mittelmeers - ziemlich mit Plastiktütenleichen verschmutzt, vom Doradeessen hielt uns das trotzdem nicht ab und die waren zwar etwas teuer, aber prima. Es war ein sehr schöner Urlaub. Mir hat es glaube ich besser gefallen als Tunesien, wo ich ein paar Mal war, aber nicht ganz so gut wie Israel, weil das landschaftlich abwechslungsreicher war - oder vielleicht sind wir auch einfach selbst schuld, weil wir nicht weit genug in den Süden und am Nil entlang gefahren sind. Apropos: im Nil haben wir kein eini-ziges Nilpferd gesehen, das fand ich skandalös!“

The differences regarding length and quality of the text was an interesting factor to consider. It might be a consequence of differences in knowledge about Egypt, creativity in writing and motivation to participate in the survey. Nevertheless, all texts were treated equally for the analysis, regardless their differences. Taking all the narrations into account, the most important aspects will be explained accor-ding to the following categorisation:

1.PlacesandcharacterisationHalf of the participants mentioned Cairo and dedicated a big share of the story to the capital (see figure 3.02). It is by far the most mentioned place. Furthermore, a great variety of details was used to describe the city, which focus mainly on mar-kets and bazaars. The imagination of those places stressed primarily the variety of scents, coming from herbs and exotic spices. Stories that mentioned markets were often also talking about chaotic street sceneries, which were described as stressful and unknown to the author in many cases. The city was widely associ-ated with the Pyramids of Giza and the river Nile – two main attributes, which were also mentioned without connection to Cairo, but to whole Egypt.


109

The Red Sea was the second most mentioned geographic detail in the narrations, which was vividly described as a re-gion of relaxation and water activities like snorkelling and diving. Often, the underwa-ter world was highlighted as a unique experience. Some par-ticipants described the hotels at the Red Sea as trustworthy and high standard facilities. Surprisingly, Sharm el Sheikh stands out as the only precisely named city of the region. Apart from this excep-tion, no accurate geographic information was given. Desert and Oasis was the third most mentioned place-information, that was often portrayed in a flowery way – endless sand, yellow horizons and sheer fascination were among the descriptions. The participants described the desert- and oasis-experience mostly as adventurous and challenging to a certain extend. It was noticeable, that no particular destination was mentioned at any time – the narrations presented desert and oasis always as a blurry idea without concrete names.

2.SightsandcharacterisationAccording to the narrations of survey one, the Pyramids are by far the strongest sight of the country (see figure 3.03). They received the strongest attention of the participants and were portrayed in clear descriptions mostly. Often, they were at-tributed as architectural masterpieces, travel-highlights, impressive etc. In many cases, the Pyramids were mentioned as a sight that belongs to Cairo. The Pyramids' portrayals came along with a big portion of critic, in com-parison to other sights and places – especially the attitude of the vendors and souvenir sellers was imagined and described as very annoying and stressful. In addition with the high amount of tourists, the commercialisation of the sight was partly described as a devaluation. The river Nile was the second most mentioned sight. Many participants imagined to experience a cruise on a boat along the river, which was partly com-bined with stops in oasis along the Nile, camel tours or Cairo day-trips. Inte-

Cairo

Red Sea

Oasis and Desert

Mediterenean Sea

Alexandria

Luxor

Others (Nile delta, Africa, Sharm el Sheikh/ each mentioned ones)

25

9

5

4

3

2

1

Figure 3.02 Places mentioned - Survey 1


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restingly, some participants described, that they saw the Pyramids of Giza from the boat, which is certainly im-possible. Apart form the Pyra-mids and the Nile, Museums were mentioned often, wit-hout any further explanation. A collection of sights consis-ting of Carnac, Valley of the Kings and unnamed sites in combination with the cites Lu-xor and Assuan can be grouped as pharaohnic sites of Upper Egypt.

3.TransportationOf course, the means of trans-portation depend on the places mentioned in the nar-rations (see figure 3.04). A slight exception represent the boat trips on the Nile, which were often described as an option to visit each and eve-ry place in Egypt. These Nile cruises were mentioned the most among the means of transportation. Different miss-perceptions about the geography of the river and the possibilities to cruise on it appeared occasionally. Camel-rides were the second most mentioned mean of transportation, described by many participants as an enjoyable experience, es-pecially in connection with desert activities and pharaohnic sightseeing, whereas stories, that take place in Cairo usually highlighted the taxi, which were described as shabby and chaotic, but somehow entertaining. Apart from taxis, public trans-port was rarely mentioned.

4.People:interactionanddescriptionThe interaction with local people was an essential aspect in many of the narra-tions. With slight exceptions, it was described as an enriching and good experi-ence. Only the attitude of souvenir sellers was criticized by many participants.

Pyramids and Sphinx

Nile

Bazars

Museums

Others (Carnac, Valey of the Kings, Temples, High dam, Theben / each mentioned ones)

Figure 3.03 Sights mentioned - Survey 1

23

12

3

3

1

Nile criuse

Camel

Taxi

Others (bus, jeep, public transportation /each mentioned ones)

9

4

3

1

Figure 3.04 Means of transportation - Survey 1


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Apart from that, poverty, the role of women, robbery and communication prob-lems were mentioned as problems in regard to the local people. Nevertheless, most of the stories speak about welcoming people with great hospitality and willingness to support the tourist. Often, it was narrated how the participants spent time with the local people, how they visited their houses and ate with them on spontaneous invitations. Furthermore, the people were sometimes brought in connection with the political and religious contexts of Egypt – a certain victimisation of the people appeared especially in regard to state oppression.

5.Safety:Crisis/hygiene/stateentitiesIn regard to safety for life and limb, two main concerns were detected in the narrations: 1) the general stability of the Egyptian state – an issue, that mainly stressed on terrorism, riots and state violence. Participants' statements someti-mes contradicted in either feeling very safe, or feeling very unsafe due to the high presence of military and police; 2) The hygienic circumstances were questioned many times, focussing on water and food mainly. Many participants deliberately gave warnings to be careful with street-food, fruits etc. Apart from the two main concerns mentioned, little attention was paid to robbery or other kinds of street criminality.

6. FoodFood received a great attention from the participants – most of them mentioned at least general information about it. However, some commented in detail on different dishes, ingredients and serving habits. Often, the food description was strongly interwoven with information about local people and their style of life. The participants mentioned for example humus and falafel – food that is typi-cally associated with Arab cuisine in Germany. Different breads, for example made from millet, or beverages like peppermint-tea or strong coffee were menti-oned as well. Generally the participants described the food as delicious, fresh and interesting, yet somehow strange and exotic at the same time.

7.Tourism:Serviceandquality/activities/disturbances/dealsComments on tourism or tourism related activities derived mainly from four dif-ferent aspects: 1) Service and quality was always described as satisfying and often perfect. Especially the accommodations were mainly appreciated, but negative descriptions of dirty rooms and shabby beds exist as well; 2) Activities done as


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a tourist tackle mainly sightseeing, relaxation or certain adventures; 3) Distur-bances of different kind are interlinked with most of the other aspects, yet they were found the most in regard to the souvenir sellers, as mentioned before. Fur-thermore, the huge commercialisation of the sights was criticized occasionally; 4) Purchasing of souvenirs etc. was sometimes narrated with focus on bad deals and a certain omnipresence of fraud, that visitors suffer.

8.culture:religion/habits/differencesComments on culture, which included religion or habits were mostly interwoven with the descriptions of the other aspects mentioned. Only few of the participants deliberately highlighted certain cultural aspects, beyond the scope of sightseeing. Some of them gave very detailed information about different historical elements and referred partly to particular pieces in museums, like an armour of Alexander the Great. Apart from that, most cultural comments tackled habits of people and their life style in general, which was often judged as very different from the par-ticipant one's.

9.Advice/judgementVery passionate participants sometimes added layers of information, which stand out from the general information given by the majority. Certain advices or summarizing judgements were of those special information, that offer inte-resting insights in the person's imagination, because they usually appear as very strong, convincing and knowledgeable statements. Generally, many of the parti-cipants concluded by saying, they would recommend or repeat the holiday. Some others highlighted certain aspects in the conclusion – few said, they would not come again, as long as the political situation did not change.

10.ComparisonwithotherplacesOnly very few participants used comparisons to relate Egypt to other places – ne-vertheless, the few comparisons mentioned gave interesting insights in the per-ception of the particular person. The Egyptian landscapes for example were once related to those of Israel, including the statement, the latter one's landscapes were more diverse and rich. The person therefore stated to prefer Israel, but still to like Egypt more than Tunisia in regard to landscape.


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ComparingthetwoSurveysIt is important to acknowledge, that the surveys differ from each other to a cer-tain extent, since it was not feasible to confront both former Egypt-tourists and potential Egypt-tourists with the same set of questions. Hereafter, the remaining questions of survey one will be related to those questions of survey two, which are equal and therefore comparable. A goal of the surveys was to understand the knowledge that people have about Egypt. Certain sample check-questions were asked to see, how big and so-lid the existing Egypt-imagination is. Furthermore, it was important to figure out, where the people's knowledge derives from. The following questions, origi-nally in German, were asked in both surveys.

no35,90 %

yes64,10 %

no 49,25 %

yes 50,75 %

Figure 3.06 Do you know any pub-lication of egypt.travel? Survey 2 (67 participants)

yes 23,88

no 76,12

Figure 3.05 Did you ever pay any attention to Egypt through media? Survey 1 (39 participants) and survey 2 (67 participants)

Colour-codeIn the following, this colour-code will be used to seperate survey one from two. Par-ticipants of survey one will be called poten-tal-tourists and participants of survey two are called tourists.

Survey onepotential-tourists

Survey twotourists

Knowledge about Egypt and sources of informationMedia attention payed to Egypt

For both groups, the major media to gain information about Egypt was the in-ternet – here, different sources like news, travel information, declarations of the German federal office etc. were used (see figure 3.5). Furthermore, many of the participants gained information about Egypt through books and some, especially among the tourists, understand friends in Egypt as most important source of information.


114

Topics of Egypt‘s media depictionThe participants that answered yes in the previous question could write down an unlimited number of topics. Most of them wrote down between three and five different themes, that they could recall. The answers were categorized according to main topics, in order to compare the most important information.

Both groups were exposed to similar topics, but to a different extend. The tou-rists seem to have been researching on particular information in regard to their holidays, whereas the non-tourists do not have a strong focus (see figure 3.07).

Knowledge about Egyptian companies, organisations or products

Destinations and tourism

Revolution and political crisis

History and culture

Egyptian lives

Geography and nature

History and culture

Revolution and political crisis

Destinations and tourism

Geography and nature

Egyptian lives

45 57%

13 16%

12 15%

7 9%

2 3%

31 41%

22 29%

9 12%

7 10%

6 8%

Figure 3.07 Which topics have been depicted concerning Egypt? Survey 1 (25 participants) Survey 2 (29 participants). Results in absolute numbers and percent.

yes12,82

no87,18 %

yes 52,31 %

no47,69 %

Figure 3.08 Do you know any Egyptian companies, organisations or products ? Survey 1 (39 participants) Survey 2 (65 participants)


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Naming known companies, organisations or products from Egypt The tourists - participants of survey two, were able to name different everyday products, that they most probably expe-rienced during their holidays, whereas the potential-tou-rists‘ knowledge was limited to more general aspects most-ly. Generally, the knowledge of both groups was rather small (see figure 3.08 and 3.09).

Small Pyramid Luxor

Sekem

Cotton

Dates

Moslem-brotherhood

Egypt Air

Karkadeh

Etisalat

Juhaina

Finas cigaretts, Silver jewelery

ISIS (Food), Cottonil, Nigmen, Henna, Al Azhar, Bank of Alex-andria, Stella beer, Papyrus...

Filmproduction

Figure 3.09 Which organisations, companies or products do you know? Survey 1 (11 participants) Survey 2 (28 participants) Each square repre-sents on mentioning.

Knowledge about famous EgyptiansPeople, as mentioned before, represent an important channel of brand commu-nication. Yet, it is not only the society of a country itself, but also particular per-sonalities that represent the place somehow and become an important part of the place‘s brand. Famous people in sports, music, art, politics etc. might function as ambassadors for the places they represent. Whereas the potential tourist‘s know-ledge about famous Egyptians focussed strongly on famous Pharaohs and pre-sidents of the last fifty years, the tourists mentioned a few musicians and actors too, which represents more of Egyptian pop-culture and contemporary life (see figure 3.10). Nevertheless, it is noticeable that the absolutely dominating areas of accumulation of known people are ancient history and politics of the younger Egyptian history until today.


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AttitudetowardsEgypt-holidayofnon-tourists(survey1)

Willingness to spend holiday in Egypt and reasons to refuse

no28,21

yes71,79

Bad security

Too hot

Heard bad things

No interest in region

Something else(i am too old, too little

greenery in Egypt, bad infrastructure in Egypt)

Figure 3.11 Would you factually spend holidays in Egypt? Survey 1 (39 participants)

Figure 3.12 If you would not want to spend holiday in Egypt, why? Survey 1 (11 participants)

Cleopatra

Tutanch Amun

Hosni Mubarak

Nofretete

Ramses (diverse)

Nasser

Yasir Arafat

Omar Sharif

Echnaton

Cheops

17 18%

10 10%

9 9%

8 8%

7 7%

6 6%

5 5%

5 5%

3 3%

3 3%

15 10%

11 8%

10 7%

9 6%

9 6%

9 6%

8 5%

8 5%

7 5%

7 5%

Hosni Mubarak

Mohamed Mursi

Abd al-Fattah as-Sisi

Amr Diab

Tutanch Amun

Omar Sharif

Anwar as Sadat

Cleopatra

Nasser

Um Kulsum

Figure 3.10 Which famous Egyptians do you know? Survey 1 (33 participants / 96 anwers in total) Survey 2 (45 participants / 146 anwers in total). Results in absolute numbers in percent.


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Generalinformationabouttheholidayofthetourists(surveytwo)The following questions focussed on the general structure of the participant's Egypt holiday or holidays.

Year(s) of Egypt-visitThe answers of the second survey‘s participants show great similarity to the general flow of visitor-arrivals in that particular time span (see figu-re 3.13). The year of the politi-cal revolution, 2011, marks the strong negative peak. Compa-rable to the overall statistics of Egyptian tourism, the partici-pants' visits grew in number slowly from year to year.

before 2010

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

35 51%

21 30%

25 36%

30 43%

34 4 49%

38 5 55%

36 52%

Figure 3.13 When have you been to Egypt? Survey 2 (69 participants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

Finally, participants of survey one were asked about their general attitude to-wards holidays in Egypt (see figure 3.11 and 3.12) – it was important to know, if they would factually spend a holiday in the country. Even though the survey mainly offered positive results in terms of the place image, a remarkable number of participants would not visit the country. The often discussed lack of security was the most prominent reason for the decision.


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Family holiday

Swimming holiday

Relaxing holiday

Shopping holiday

Culture holiday

Hiking holiday

Adventure holiday

Snorkelling / diving holiday

Nile-criuse

something else(combination with business journey, visiting friends...)

22 32%

43 62%

31 45%

3 4%

45 62%

1 1%

10 15%

24 35%

29 42%

8 12%

Figure 3.14 How would you categorize your holiday in Egypt? Survey 2 (69 participants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

Categorization of the Egypt-holidayTaking together the categories relaxing, snorkelling / diving and swimming, the tourism product sun & sea is the main reason for the participants to come to Egypt (see figure 3.14). On the second place, is the cultural holiday with a big distance to the other ca-tegories. In that regard, the answers display the two most important tourism product strongly. Nevertheless, the touristic diversity of Egypt is implicated in the answers slightly as well.


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Places visited in Egypt.Surprisingly, Cairo was visited the most by the participants (see figure 3.15). It can be as-sumed, that many of them spent short time there, after arriving in or before leaving Egypt. Some might have done day-trips from other destina-tions to the capital. Going very much along the official statis-tics, Hurghada and other Red Sea destinations are placed prominently.

Figure 3.15 Which places did you visit in Egypt? Survey 2 (73 participants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

Cairo and Giza

Hurghada

El Gouna

Sharm el Sheikh

Dahab

Alexandria

Port Said

Suez

Luxor and / or Assuan

Siwa

others(Sokhna, Makadi Bay,Tunis, Sharkiya, Marsa Alam, Edfu, Mansoura, Nuweiba, Taba, Makadi Bay...)

51 70%

50 69%

22 30%

19 26%

13 18%

11 15%

6 8%

8 11%

48 63%

7 10%

19 26%


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Sights visited in Egypt.The answer-options inclu-ded a wide range of different sights (see figure 3.16). Geo-graphic features were com-bined here with monuments, due to the assumption that they have symbolic meaning for the place. The participants selected mostly and in almost equal numbers the Red Sea, the desert, the Pyramids and the river Nile. Even though it is not known where the people exactly visited the sights men-tioned, it is noticeable that all aspects can be found in Cairo and its close surrounding.

Red Sea

Desert

Nile

Pyramids of Giza

Citadell of Saladin

Muhammed Ali Mosque

Khan el Khalili

Abu Simbel

Valley of the Kings

Others (Carnac temple, Luxor temple, Assuan damm, Egyptian museum, Nubian museum...)

57 79%

51 70%

56 78%

50 69%

18 25%

21 29%

23 32%

20 28%

46 64%

19 26%

Figure 3.16 Which sights did you visit in Egypt? Survey 2 (72 partici-pants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

Service

Price in relation to performance and quality

Hygienic standarts

Transportation

Food

Enterntainment

Very bad

Bad

Good

Very good

No answer

Figure 3.17 Please rank these aspects accor-ding to its quality - Survey 2 (72 participants) No exact percent number mentioned in the graphic, when less than 10 percent.

40%

46% 51%

18%51,5%

49%

48,5%

48,5% 31%

18% 28%

44%

17%12%

54%

Evaluation of the Egypt-holiday and recommendation

no9,86

yes90,14

Figure 3.18.: Would you recommend Egypt as a holiday destination? Survey 2 (71 participants)


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Justificationsforrecommendation/norecommendationofEgyptasa holiday destination

1.People- mentioned 36 times as reason for a recommendation- mentioned 9 times as reason against a recommendationThe Egyptians were the reason mentioned the most in both categories, recom-mendation yes and no. The great majority of the participants argued that the friendliness, hospitality and life-attitude of the locals are an important reason, why they would recommend the country. At the same time, the locals were the number one reason why participants would not recommend the country. Espe-cially the selling attitude, criminality, pushiness and general unfriendliness were mentioned as reasons here.

2.Culture- mentioned 25 times as reason for a recommendationThe Egyptian culture is much appreciated and often described in flowery words. The architecture of the different ages and periods, but also certain traditions and local food were among the further descriptions.

3.Seaandbeach- mentioned 17 times as reason for a recommendationGoing along with the number one tourism product of Egypt, the sun & sea is among the most important arguments for a recommendation. Especially the un-derwater world, clean beaches and the Red Sea in general were highlighted often in the survey.

4. Weather- mentioned 13 times as reason for a recommendationThe weather conditions, especially in regard to the full year availability of the two main tourism products (sun & sea and culture) and the sun guaranty is a main reason for recommendations.


122

5.Diversityofoptions- mentioned 10 times as reason for a recommendationMany participants appreciated the multiple availability of different tourism pro-ducts – especially the connection of sun & sea and culture is important for that reason. But the means of transportation found little critique as well, which were considered uncomfortable and stressful.

6. Landscape and geographic features- mentioned 9 times as reason for a recommendationThe landscape, which was especially described as the river Nile and the desert, is a major reason for a recommendation as well. Sunsets and other magical mo-ments appeared as details occasionally to give further descriptions. Nevertheless, once the opinion appeared, that the landscape is not unique enough, to justify the stress and strain needed to reach the different destinations (see also 5. diversity of options).

7.OtherargumentsforandagainstarecommendationThe comparable low prices in Egypt, often in relation with the service that was considered good often, were occasionally mentioned as reason for a recommen-dation. Slightly more often, the short travel distance from Germany was menti-oned in that regard as well. A collective critique, representing arguments against a recommendation targeted Cairo – chaotic traffic, related noise and bad air, generally big amount of garbage were among the reasons. Military presence, weak status of security, the behaviour of men towards women, criminality and the dress-code for women were mentioned as arguments against a recommendation as well.


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Perceptions about Egypt

Comparing the characteriza-tion of Egypt after and before holidaysBy making the participants compare the expected and the experienced characteristics of Egypt, it should be possible to understand the impact of a visit on the place image (see figure 3.19). Tough the results between both perspectives, before and after holiday, did not differ strongly in most ca-ses, which might imply, that the image held by participants before their they came to the country was very close the re-ality they experienced during their stay.

poor

rich

islamic

coptic

traditional

future-oriented

radical

peaceful

orientalic

africanic

modern

historic

something else

43 63%

42 62%

46 68%

30 44%

38 56%

33 49%

5 7%

13 19%

11 16%

7 10%

8 12%

14 20%

3 4%

36 55%

37 57%

34 52%

12 19%

40 61%

26 40%

6 9%

6 9%

5 8%

4 6%

3 5%

6 9%

6 9%

Figure 3.19 How do you characterize Egypt after you have spent holidays there / how did you characterize it before? Survey 2 (68 / 65 participants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

After holidays

Before holidays


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Comparing the assotiations with Egypt after and before holidayThe comparison between be-fore and after holiday was used again to understand the change of associations rela-ted to the country (see figu-re 3.20). Again, participants mostly gave quite similar answers with some strong ex-ceptions – traffic, street cafés, good food and military were associations held much stron-ger after the holiday than be-fore.

Chaos

Silence

Trafic

Street cafés

Good food

Dogs

Dictatorship

Military

Freedom

Crisis

Desert

Camel

Heat

Sea

Parks

28 41%

20 29%

15 22%

11 16%

36 53%

35 52%

46 68%

20 31%

10 15%

5 8%

19 29%

17 26%

8 12%

18 27%

52 77%

30 44%

35 52%

42 62%

9 13%

5 8%

19 28%

47 72%

33 51%

39 60%

41 63%

2 3%

32 47%

13 20%

11 17%

17 26%

Figure 3.20 What do you associate with Egypt after you spent holidays the-re / what did you associate with it before you spent holidays there? Survey 2 (68 / 65 participants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

After holidays

Before holidays

Egyptian mentalityThe people of Egypt are an im-portant aspect of the place‘s brand. As mentioned before, it might be their mentality, that will affect the way how tou-rists perceive and describe the place. Participants were asked to rank the small selection of mental characteristics accor-ding to how they perceive the locals (see figure 3.21). Clear-ly, the main statements of the graphic are: Egyptians were perceived as very hospitable


125

Fear

Enthusiasm

Stress

Refusal

Suspense

51%

26,7%

30%

51%

27% 21% 20% 24%

22,5% 12%

24% 13% 15%

54,5%

17% 14%

Figure 3.22 Describe your feelings during your stay in Egyptians by ran-king the attributes. Survey 2 (68 participants) No exact percent number mentioned in the graphic, when less than 10 percent.

hospitable

deceitful

tolerant

agressive

religious

1 not at all

2

3

4

5

6

7 very much

Figure 3.21 Please rank the attributes according to the Egyptian mentali-ty Survey 2 (67 participants) No exact percent number mentioned in the graphic, when less than 10 percent.

73%

15% 21%

12% 15% 29% 21,5%

23% 20%

20% 30% 15% 18%

45,5%26%15%

12%

15%and very religious. Mainly, the results show a positive image of the people, yet unfortunate high rankings were given in for aggressiveness and deceit-fulness as well.

Figure 3.23 How concerned have you been du-ring your holiday in Egypt regarding the safety? Survey 2 (68 participants) No exact percent number mentioned in the graphic, when less than 10 percent.

38 % 16 % 10 % 16 %

Security

Feelings during the holidayThe participants generally ranked the Egypt holiday po-sitive in terms of feelings they had (see figures 3.22 and 3.23) – the major accumulation of answers shows that they most-ly did not feel fear, they were enthusiastic and felt no re-fusal towards anything. Only a small number of the par-ticipants did feel concerned about the safety-situation in the country while being there. Nevertheless, most them saw the need to obtain particular information about the current status of security before co-ming to Egypt.

52 77%


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Information on security

Cairo‘s level of threat in comparison to the rest of Egypt

no17,65

yes82,35

Travel agency

German federal foreign office

Friends

Others (family members, Egyptian friends, diving company)

10 17,5%

43 75,5%

32 56%

8 14%

Figure 3.24 Did you obtain special information on security? Survey 2 (68 participants)

Figure 3.25 Which source did you use to obtain information on security? Survey 2 (57 participants) Results in absolute numbers and percent.

no78,72

yes21,28

Chaotic traffic

Military presence

Danger of attacks

Croud of people

Poverty and despair

Others (noise, dirt, young men, agres-

siveness)

Figure 3.26 Did you find Cairo more threatening than the rest of Egypt? Survey 2 (68 participants)

Figure 3.26.2 If yes, why did you find Cairo more threatening than the rest of Cairo? Survey 2 (13 participants)

Cairo was only by one fifth of the participants perceived as more threatening than the rest of Egypt (see figure 3.26) – interestingly it is the traffic, that seems to challenge the foreigners most. Furthermore, slightly contradicting perceptions were noticeable in regard to the safety – people seem to find both threatening the danger of terrorism and at the same time the military force‘s measures to prevent it.


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3.2.PerceivedBrandIdentity

In the following, the surveys' results will be compared with the brand analy-sis of chapter 2 in order to analyse the brand awareness of the tourists. Again, Risitano's categorisation of the brand identity (2008) will be applied.

PerceivedbrandcultureAccording to survey one (potential-tourists), the most essential element of Egypt's brand culture is the Pharaohnic remain, represented through monuments, ar-chitecture but also through a certain spirit and magic of the place. It was often described with precise information and detailed names. The general knowledge of the participants was mainly accumulated within this topic's boundaries. The participants also dedicated a big attention to a certain flair and atmosphere of the orient, mainly found on bazaars in Cairo. Attributes like smell, trading tech-niques, goods, narrow streets, shouting people etc. were often used to describe the place's brand culture. Cairo received great attention from the non-tourists and was understood as a vivid and chaotic place mostly. The city was related to different kinds of cultural heritage like Islamic, Coptic and Pharaohnic, but the strong focus was on the latter one. Furthermore, by mentioning swimming, diving, snorkelling and relaxing often, it became evident, that the participants understand the sun & sea product as a main part of the brand culture. Survey two (tourists) widely confirms the results of survey one, although the given answers are generally more broad and knowledgeable. The participants were partly able to show a great amount of details and information, which were unknown to the participants of survey one. Nevertheless, both groups stressed on culture and sun & sea and portrayed them as the essence of the brand cul-ture. Additionally, the tourists of survey two focussed strongly on the local people – many of the participants highlighted them as a major quality of the country. Many participants seemed to argue, that local people are the key to a joyful Egypt holiday. Long lasting friendships with Egyptians were mentioned often and de-scribed as the as the best source of information about the country, especially in comparison to media depiction for example.

PERCEIVED BRAND IDENTITY

128

Brand characterThe brand character, as the representation of trustworthiness and the ability to stand promises, was mainly promoted and communicated as a “unique experi-ence” and “something that everybody should see in life”, with a special regard to the culture of the place. In fact, some of the participants of both surveys used similar expression to describe the Pyramids, the river Nile or the Valley of the Kings for example. Again, it is especially the Pharaohnic heritage, which incor-porates such promises and expectations. The non tourists of survey one mainly narrated them as as great as expected, or even greater. The tourists of survey two did not pay as much attention to the pyramids or pharaohnic heritage, but high-lighted more the Red Sea's underwater-world. The trustworthiness and reliability of Egypt seems negatively affected by different aspects as well – most of them concerned the current political situation. It is evident, that many of the participants of both surveys do not trust the Egyp-tian state and are concerned about the development of poverty, law and order, terrorism and Islamic strictness for example. Even though Egypt is currently not in the focus of German media any more, certain problematic incidents bring the country occasionally back in the spotlight. The great majority of the participants would 1.) visit Egypt or visit it even again; 2.) would recommend a holiday in the country or; 3.) do not feel any dan-ger during holidays. Nevertheless, most of them see a need to be carefully infor-med about the status of security, and some see the political situation as a reason to not consider Egypt as a holiday country in these days. Brand personalityUnlike the official promotion of Egypt through the Ministry of Tourism, the sur-veys' participants mostly personalized the country through its inhabitants. Wel-coming, friendly and honest were attributes often used by the tourists, whereas the potential-tourists often narrated exoticness, friendly curiousness and hospi-tality. In both groups, the positive descriptions dominated strongly and affected the whole perception of the country. Nevertheless, the people were also a main factor of critique – complains about annoying vendors or aggressive men for ex-ample appeared occasionally. Apart from the Egyptians, the brand personality received attribution when sights and places are described further. Again it is Cairo, which receives the strongest attention and most descriptive words from the non-tourists in sur-


129

vey 1. Terms like vivid, chaotic, wild, laud, sleepless etc. were used frequently to describe Cairo. The pharaohnic monuments, were often attributed as majestic, mystical or alien. The tourists of survey two usually agreed in that matter, yet they depicted a more broad image, that focussed mainly on the Red Sea destinations. Naturally, the attribution concentrated more on climatic conditions, landscape, underwater world and typical tourism services. Brandlogo,name,sloganThe participants of both surveys showed awareness of the most important sym-bols like beach, sea, desert, pharaohnic monuments (especially the Pyramids) for example. Especially Cairo was symbolized through different terms like chaos, bazaars, certain smells or oriental atmosphere. Only 23,88 % of the tourists have been exposed to the officially published materi-al of the tourism ministry, which means that the rest of the participants does not know the official logo or the slogan of egypt.travel.

Fig:Appliedbrandcommuncationmodel-version2(detailfromRisitano,M.2010/withmodificationsbytheauthor)

culture, sun & sea


Kairo / Ägypten




Diversity of unofficial actors and information

intended brandinfluences

unintended brandinfluences

Refugees

Violence

Crisis

terrorTravel alerts

Terror

Protest

Lack of justice

Culture

Figure 3.27 Brand communcation and positioning strategy - brand awareness (detail from Risitano, M. 2010 with modifica-tions by Schopf, G. 2015)

"Ägypten, wo alles beginnt"

Brand Awareness

Gradient-code

Strongly perceived aspects

Weaklyperceived aspects


130

3.2.1.Thechannelsofthebrand

Clearly, Egypt has two main channels which are strong communicators of the place brand – tourism and culture. Both work perfectly hand in hand, since the one represents the main asset of the other. Egypt faces the luxury position of having a unique cultural heritage, which is global basic knowledge and almost known to everybody. As known as the tourism product culture, seems to be the tourism product sun & sea to both tourists and non-tourists. Clearly, sun & sea is an essential part of Egypt's brand culture, whereas it can hardly be counted to the brand of Cairo. Still, the channel tourism is weakened due to its strong relation to the issue of safety. Tourism and culture as channels of the place brand communicate impor-tant information about the identity of the brand – strong symbols and a great part of the personification can be generated through them, regardless the actual popularity of the official tourism promotion. As said before, tourism is a sector of economy and a channel of the brand, which is very vulnerable to crisis, especially if the status of security is affected in any sense. A strong and holistic brand needs to build on other brand channels too, in order to be resistive and flexible. Nevertheless, beyond these two powerful brand channels, the brand Egypt / Cairo has weaknesses, which affect the tourism and culture as well. Espe-cially the channel “policies” is problematic for the brand, since the Egyptian state seems to lack trustworthiness on several levels. The two surveys have shown, that many participants are concerned about different aspects in regard to Egypt's law and order, status of democracy, influence and presence of military forces, pover-ty of the local people or the general instability of the greater region. Of course, this scepticism affects the tourism in a negative way, since the status of security is depending on these issues. At the same time, it might add numerous new at-tributions to the brand personality, shift the brand character out of control and therefore harm the whole brand identity. Egyptian corporate or product brands are widely unknown to non-tou-rists – they could only list a very limited number of organisations, companies or products. The participants of survey two to the contrary were able to name many more, including especially a broad range of Egyptian products. A comparable relation appeared regarding the knowledge of famous Egyptians. It was evident, that the non-tourists' knowledge was limited mainly to different Pharaohs and very few persons of the previous or current political establishment. The tourists were able to list a more broad range, that included musicians, actors or business


131

men for example. Still, compared to the number of participants, the knowledge about both people and brands was generally small among tourists and potential-tourists. Both, the brand channels people and brands are strong communicators, which could add important associations and symbols to the knowledge about the brand identity – Egypt faces a lot of unused potential in this regard. Figure 3.28 combines the estimated status of Egypt‘s brand channels. The last channel of Anholt's place brand hexagon, Investment, is naturally not much in the awareness of private people, but is more important for enterpri-ses for example. Non of the participants mentioned any note regarding invest-ment, apart from the general debate on tourism, which of course is an investment as well. In that regard in can be said, that the current political situation in Egypt is reason for some of the potential-tourists (survey one) not to invest in holidays in Egypt – it can be assumed, that the same concern might also frighten potential investors. A more harmonic interplay of the different place brand-channels and the strengthening of each of them, would help the whole place brand to grow and resist problems.

Culture

Investment

Brands (products, corporate)

People

very positive

positive

negative

hardly activated

Policies

Tourism

Figure 3.28 Brand Hexagon accoding to tourist‘s brand awareness, showing the place brand‘s channels of communication (Anholt S. 2010 with modifications by Schopf G.)

very strongstrong

weak

very weak


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3.3.Chapter‘sconclusion

The surveys revealed interesting information about the brand-knowledge of both tourists and potential-tourists of Egypt. Generally, both surveys' target groups seem to understand Egypt mainly as a place for culture and sun & sea, which are exactly the essential tourism products, as described by the Egyptian Ministry of tourism. Especially in the Egypt-imagination of the potential-tourists, Cairo plays a major role, which contradicts with the actual tourism situation in the city. People narrated vivid and detailed stories about the capital which show a great portion of realism – chaos, poverty, dirt and noise are important impressi-on mentioned. In fact, the portrait given by most of the participants was far away from the image given by the official promotion. It seems, that the people feel a certain fascination and interest for the rough reality of Cairo. The tourists two of survey did not focus much on Cairo, but mainly on the sun & sea product available at the Red Sea for example, even though a great share of the participants actually visited the capital. Obviously, Cairo is a greater aspect of the Egypt-imagination without the factual experience of a holiday in the country. It might be the conse-quence of the position Cairo has within the overal tourism promotion of Egypt. Cairo's perceived brand identity has powerful strengths like the unique culture, the local people, strong symbols and a very clearly focussed imagination held by many people. A particular interest seems to exist in the aspect of urban chaos, which is an essential aspect of the city‘s reality. Nevertheless, the brand identity suffers a lot from weaknesses related to the lack of security or mistrust in the state. Both cause diverse consequences for the perceived identity of the tourism brand, like negative attribution and con-nection to danger. The channels of brand communication are partly very strong, especially in regard to tourism and culture, but the remaining channels are ext-remely weak in communicating the country and its capital to potential tourists. The resulting place brand is unbalanced, not holistic and vulnerable to different dangers.


133


134

SWOT & RECOMMENDATIONS

135

4. SWOT & recommendations

4.1.Strengthsandweaknesses

From the analysis done in chapter two and three, the main strength and weak-nesses of the Cairo's place brand have been detected, which are relevant for the main vision announced by tourism minister Hesham Zazou – “improving the perception of Egypt”.

Strengths

People:Even though some critique on selling habits for example was found, the case of Egypt proofs the importance of local people for the place brand (Anholt, 2007). According to both surveys, the people are a major treasure for the place brand. Especially the tourists reported in great number and flowery details about the kind-hearted, welcoming people, who love to share their traditions, foods and habits with visitors. People were widely mentioned as a main reason for an Egypt-holiday recommendation. Even the potential-tourists of survey one showed big interest in the locals and narrated a joyful interaction with them. Obviously, a huge interest in the dif-ferent lifestyles exists, which was not affected negatively by the current political situation in Egypt.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

136

Culture: From the branding point of view, Egypt is in a very unique and lucky position to owe a culture that almost everybody can relate to. Having monuments of symbolic dimension, that are known to the majority of the world's population is a gift to a place brand. The Pyramids of Giza, being the strongest element of it, reflect a unique selling proposition that no competing destination can offer. Pha-raohnic heritage is appreciated strongly and creates an element of mystery and fascination, that is of enormous value for the place brand. It is one of the few glo-bal “must see places” and it will always represent the country's untouchable as-set. The size of the Pyramids within the people's imagination of Egypt is unlikely to shrink, however big political weaknesses and threats will grow. Of course, the strength culture, is diverse and goes far beyond the pharanohnic sights – Egypt is also a place of potential interaction with Islamic heritage, which can make the country a mediator between the often negatively perceived religion and western tourists.

StrongvisualImage: The culture of Cairo is rich and unique, but from the branding point of view its greatest strength might be the extraordinary power of the sheer image of its most important sight. The Pyramids position Cairo in people‘s minds and create a unique and very positive starting point for the brand creation.

Weaknesses

Public diplomacy: In relation to Germany, an Egyptian public diplomacy hardly exists. Egypt only represents itself in Germany through the embassy and a few sub-entities, which are not involved in many projects. Egypt misses immense chances to portray itself outside the country, which would be extremely impor-tant to broaden the scope of communication and to create a more holistic place brand. It would be an important tool to communicate today's Egyptian culture, education or life and strengthen the general perception of the state. Germany, having numerous foundations in Egypt, can do only little good for Egypt in terms of communicating its values and goals to the Germans.

State'sreputation: Clearly, Egypt is baldy reflected in western media. The po-litical changes and resulting incidents threw a dark shadow on the state's current image. Dominated by information on violence, injustice or riots, especially Cairo


137

became the focus of a media de montage, which implies a severe damage for the brand of the place. The surveys and the sample check on the media depiction create a similar image – the state Egypt is perceived as something, that western values strongly disagree with.

Safety: Safety is the most essential need for tourism and a good international perception. In fact, the issue causes complex problems for the brand percepti-on: it is not only the likelihood of terror-attacks, the state's weakness and the instability of the whole region that creates an atmosphere of doubts and fear – it is the measures to keep threats away too, which worries or scares foreigners. In that sense, especially the high amount of military presence appears to be highly problematic, which might be somehow interlinked with the bad state reputation – people seem to mistrust the army forces, or feel disturbed by the omnipresence of arms. At the same time, they symbolize the real danger by reminding people constantly of it.

PortraitofCairo: Currently Cairo receives little space in the tourism promoti-on. It represents only a little part of the official website and it hardly appears in the videos. Cairo has no logo, slogan etc. Instead it seems to be the intention to hide the city from the potential tourist‘s awareness.

From the resulting strengths and weaknesses, the swot-analysis was developed, by relating them to existing opportunities and threats (see figure 4.01).

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

138

People: A stronger communication of

the qualities with a realistic relation to

traditions, habits, food and everyday

life to bring the Egyptians closer to

the potential tourists. The promotion

materials of all kind includes more

human scale and aspects of interac-

tion and experience.

People: Frustration in the society re-

garding the political situation mani-

fests itself in religious radicalization,

increasing criminality or hostility. The

attitude of souvenir-vendors is anno-

ying and frightening to tourists.

Culture: Sensitive use of great sym-

bolic monuments and promotion as a

mystical space to experience. Strong

use of Islamic and Coptic heritage

in promotion and communication as

cultural ambassadors. Honest com-

munication of Cairo as a diverse me-

tropolis, that faces challenges and

offers exotic, oriental experience in

a combination of different ages and

cultures.

Culture: Losing character and spirit to

randomness through mass-tourism

and atmosphere of consumerism -

offering a disappointing sight-experi-

ence in consequence. Neglecting the

tourism product culture, due to strong

focus on easy selling sun & sea. Vi-

sitors avoid Egypt destination due to

safety concerns.

Strenghts

Opp

ortu

nitie

sTh

reat

s

Figure 4.01 SWOT-Analysis according to the vision of improving the image of Egypt (Schopf G. 2015)

Strong visual image: The power of

the unique image is used in a clever

way to support the portrait of a mo-

dern city with contemporary urban

features.

Strong visual image: The value of the

symbolic images is neglected and

abandoned or used in an isolated

way, that does not communicate the

whole city.

4.2.SWOTAnalysis


139

Public diplomacy: Different means of

public diplomacy are implemented

and used in a coherent way. Egypt

communicates ambitious plans and

vision and generates trust.

Public diplomacy: Public diplomacy

is continuously neglected and un-

used as channel to communicate va-

lues and visions. Needed funding is

not available and plans for realisation

are weak and unstructured.

State's reputation: Severe steps are

taken to deal with problems in regard

to the weak democracy and proble-

matic law and order system – steps

are communicated loudly through

promotion and public diplomacy.

State's reputation: Bad reputation

hardens and expands due to the fact

that the perceived problems increa-

se. Trust in improvement is lost com-

pletely among potential tourists,

Safety: Any kind of diffuse violence,

especially in regard to terror-attacks,

are permanently prevented and all

parts of the state are under state's

control.

Safety: Violence like terror-attacks

expand and appear more often and

more destructive.

Weaknesses

Portrait of Cairo: The city's promotion

is being turned from very passive and

shy to a precise, clever and proud

communication strategy that offers

new images and ideas about it.

Portrait of Cairo: Promotion of Cairo

is continuously neglected and the

city looses more and more value for

Egypt's tourism. The information po-

tential tourists receive about the city

are purely uncontrollable contribute

to the brand creation in an uninten-

ded and most probably harmful way.

SWOT ANALYSIS

140

4.3.Recommendations

4.3.1.Creatingaholisticbrandingapproach

The vision “improving the image of Egypt”, announced by the Minister of Tou-rism, serves as the strategy's head and policy, that creates the uniting element. Through the different layers, the strategical sketch refers to the main findings of the swot analysis and intends to use strengths in order to cope with weaknesses. The vision implicates the analysed weaknesses partly – the current unpleasant image seems to have a close relation to the way how the Egyptian state and the status of security is perceived internationally. A main precondition to achieve improvement has to be provided by political decisions, which will result in a bet-ter portrait of Egypt in the media. Nevertheless, Anholt (2010) argues that in order to start the complex process, it is legitimate and needed to communicate the vision of change loudly to global audience long before the political conditions adapted to it. In that sense, speaking about change becomes the first step of it. The strong connection between place branding and politics becomes evident here – still, having in mind the complexity of problems Egypt is facing and the time it will take to solve them, a branding strategy should also try to simply shift the focus towards more fortunate information. It is impossible to abandon the bad news depiction – yet it is possible to convey strong and fruitful scaffold of infor-mation that can cope with it. To achieve the vision, the strategy aims at regaining and strengthening trust though four levels of public diplomacy and tourism promotion in Germany and other partner countries (see figure 4.02). It intends generally to create an atmosphere of trustworthiness and visionary change, that is being communica-ted proudly and honestly. In that sense, the branding of Egypt and Cairo has to be understood not only as promotional effort, but as the strong cooperation between public diplomacy and promotion though all the brand-channels. Never-theless, paying more attention to the city-branding of Cairo and its promotion is an important aspect to create a strategy, that is aware of all the needed brand elements and the positioning of Cairo through precise communication elements. Consequently, the establishment of clever public diplomacy and tourism promo-tion should be understood as the strategy's program, both dedicated to the an-nounced vision and united through the policy.


141

Policy

Plan

Program

Projects

Cultural

Foundations

could include for example: could include for example:

Educational

Foundations

Different

music classes

Different

Art classes

Hieroglyphes

reading

Political

Foundations

Discussion

circles

Political

workshops

Contact

entity

Programs with

schools

Language

courses

Exchange

programs

Logo / Slogan

for Cairo

Video clips

for Cairo

Creating

festivals etc.

Tourism promotion

(in target countries)

Cairo

Website

Viral

marketing

Representation

on tourism fairs

Public

Diplomacy

in Germany

Visual

communication

strategy

Improving the

image of Egypt

Figure 4.02 Framework of recommended strategy

Public diplomacy on the plan level aims at establishing platforms and entities in important partner countries to allow a close communication with the important actors abroad. In that regard, different foundations should be created which en-gage in culture, education, politics etc. and create speakers of Egypt, that include physical representations and places of interaction. The cooperation with local partners in the targeted countries will strengthen the relation on an organisati-

RECOMMENDATIONS

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onal level and offer plenty of chances for Egypt to re-portrait itself according to the vision. Through the use of foundations in different fields, it will be possible to implement different projects in the partner country, that should offer a great variety of cultural, educational or political activities. They will function as brand speakers that communicate Egypt in a very positive and useful way. Bringing as much as possible people in contact with activities offered by the foundations will help to create trust in the vision of Egypt and improve people's general attitude towards the country. In that context, Germany can be seen as a successful ex-ample – comparing the horribly isolated situation of it after World War Second with the country's current strong reputation, illustrates the possibilities of image change. The vast use of public diplomacy can certainly be understood as a major contribution to the enormous improvement in that regard. From the tourism promotional point of view, the capitol's position within the existing promotion of Egypt needs to be strengthened and re-evaluated. Es-pecially in comparison with competitors in the market, Cairo's promotion for tourism lacks pride and courage. Currently, the city is rather a hidden aspect within the overall promotion of Egypt, which does not reflect its huge potenti-al. Touristic capitols or mega-cities like Dubai, Istanbul, London, San Francisco, Bangkok, Berlin, Paris and many more dedicate great attention to a certain pro-motion and strategical media communication. Cairo needs to create a complex and broad visual communication urgently. It should reflect the defined values, touristic qualities and the strategy's vision. It has to be defined how Cairo wants to communicate itself and how the audience can be addressed. The findings should result different projects which represent the final visualisation. First and foremost it should include a corporate design that includes all the traditional ele-ments such as logo, typographic hierarchy, slogan, colour-system, layout-stan-dards. The corporate design will serve as a consequent base to build up projects such as campaigns, viral marketing, tourism infrastructure etc. The visual communication should become the form of the greater strate-gy and embody the strengths mentioned to cope with the weaknesses. Especially the brand-element people represents a strong tool to communicate messages in a creative way, using a rather personal level. Currently, the promotion material uses almost no local people, which creates a lack of human character in the com-munication. The strong symbols of cultural heritage are a gift to the place brand of Egypt and Cairo that should be used continuously – it could serve as a creati-ve anchor-point for the visualisation to start with. Nevertheless, communicating contemporary life has to find its place within the strong symbolism.


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4.3.2.Learningfrombestpractice

Announcing the vision of “improving the image of Egypt” (Minister of tourism Zazou, H. 2012) embodies the fact that the current perception is not satisfying. Cairo, being the capital and the heart of the recent problems, represents the situ-ation as much as no second place in the country. The task to transform the image is a huge challenge, especially regarding to the particular image problems, which are related to safety mainly. It appears highly unrealistic to built a branding stra-tegy on the security situation. To the contrary – all communication efforts should try to highlight positive topics. Still, Cairo has urban challenges that are widely considered problems, that can become part of the branding strategy. Two cities teach examples of a successful image transformation from negative to positive.

Las Vegas The gaming metropolis is a particularly unique case in terms of image-shift, that illustrates the possibilities of dealing with own weaknesses in a humoristic way. The city, found in the early 20th century, became soon a famous place for a vast range of activities, that belong to the grey-zone of legality. Especially the gaming business grew to an enormous economical drive with a strong connection to the milieu of organized crime. In the 70s the city faced its peak of corruption by Ma-fia activities, which culminated in a strong physical and psychological decay.

Figure 4.03 Famous sign „what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas“ (blog.ilumine8.com, 2015)

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By lifting the business into legality and fighting orga-nized crime, the city managed to create the ground for an image change. High class ho-tels, casinos and shows were introduced, which attract a continuous flow of tourists. Nevertheless, the city smartly maintained its image of “outlaw land” and created a unique and globally known brand that represents adult craziness. By stating “Whatever happens in Las Ve-gas”, stays in Las Vegas (see figure 4.03) a promise was created that shows a great portion of self-mockery and that invites people to behave in a way, they would never dare somewhere else.

Amsterdam The capital of the Netherlands was highly challenged by a bad image, that was particularly connected to the flourishing Red-Light-District (see figure 4.05) and related unpleasant issues. Comparable to the case of Las Vegas, Amsterdam was able to transform its image without abandoning its own weaknesses – in liberal tradition, the city became known as extraordinary open-minded and freedom-loving. The image shift included the problematic business and introduced it as one of many sites (and nowadays sights), in a city of friendly diversity. Going along with the spe-cial attitude towards the con-sumption of certain drugs, prostitution became a legal and de-stigmatized economic-al factor. The promotional ef-forts of Amsterdam continue the line elegantly, by commu-nicating a place of open-min-dedness, freedom, tolerance, joy and diverse culture. Ams-terdam managed to create a certain coolness, that has no

Figure 4.05 Red-Light District Amsterdam (entourist.com)

Figure 4.04 City-logo of Las Vegas (lasvegas.com)


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need to explain or excuse much – the city branded itself as a proud place of liber-ty and tolerance, that welcomes everybody's individuality by saying “I AMster-dam” (see figure 4.06).

Cairo–brandingthroughweaknesses?As illustrated by the cases of Las Vegas and Amsterdam, it can be a valuable stra-tegy to include weaknesses in the branding strategy and to transform them into unique and powerful characteristics. Of course, finding the right balance matters in that regard and, as mentioned before, the weak safety of Egypt is certainly not feasible to use. The surveys done in the research showed, that the participants are very much aware about certain realities of Cairo – especially the chaos and crowd were elements mentioned often and described precisely. These aspects might be considered one of many major urban problems in Egypt‘s capital by its inhabi-tants – nevertheless they represent a particular characteristic of the mega city that can not be neglected. For most of the tourists and potential tourists, it might represent something very exotic and alien. Having in mind the fact, that tourism is in many cases motivated by the curiosity for something foreign, unknown and strange, it can be assumed that the chaos is a particularly interesting aspect of Cairo. From the perspective of German tourists, the dimensions of traffic in Cairo

Figure 4.06 Slogan of Amsterdam in the city (parkhotel.nl)

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might convey a fascinating part of unknown urbanity. Finding a way to play with the congestion could add a new layer to the promotion of the city that would in-troduce honesty and humour to the tourism promotion. At the same time, it will be easy to stand the given brand promise to visitors. Of course, the branding of Cairo could only partly base on such aspects mentioned – the classical tourism product culture still represents the greatest value for the city. Using the strong symbols of Pharaohnic and Islamic heritage seems to be urgently needed, since they represent a major knowledge shared by most of the target audiences. Nevertheless, the surveys showed a great interest in Cairo‘s contemporary urbanity – a harmonic combination of 1.) old, majestic, folkloric, mystical, traditional and; 2.) new, chaotic, dynamic, diverse and urban might be the solid ground for a city image that is proud, honest and pleasant. Figure 4.07 shows how the visualisation might link important brand messages channelled through potential brand‘s assets with stylistic element.

Intention of visualisation

conveying:

Trustworthiness

Honesty & Pride

Cultural richness

Elements of visualisation

involving:

Symbols of heritage

People & folklore

Chaos & urbanity

Style of the visualisation

creating:

Dense narration

Pleasant atmosphere

Experience

embeded in related through

Figure 4.07 Recommended messages to visualize (Schopf G. 2015)

Online presence of the city for tourismLindstrom (2006) argues, that today‘s branding needs to tackle marketing campaigns that speak to all senses. In that regard, any means of visualisa-tion should try to create a dense narration, which touches different senses to a certain extend. Clearly, an official website addressing foreign tourists is a standard of today‘s city-communication. Most of the cities with ambi-tions towards tourism dedicate particular attention to it. Websites repre-


147

Figure 4.08 Start-page of New York City‘s tourism website (nycgo.com, March 2015)

Figure 4.09 Start-page of Hong Kong‘s tourism website (discoverhongkong.com, March 2015)

Figure 4.10 Start-page of Tokyo‘s tourism website (gotokyo.org, March 2015)

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Figure 4.11 Start-page of Dubai‘s tourism website (visitdubai.com, March 2015)

Figure 4.12 Start-page of Amsterdam‘s tourism website (iamsterdam.com, March 2015)

Figure 4.13 Start-page of San Francisco‘s tourism website (sanfrancisco.travel, March 2015)


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sent a logical and useful way of communication for three main reasons: 1.) it is the easiest way to reach the audience; 2.) it is an extremely flexible tool to communicate with the audience; 3.) establishing and maintaining them needs a very small budget only; 4.) it can cooperate with social networks etc.; 5.) it allows interaction with the audience. Currently, Cairo is represented only through the website of “egypt.travel”, where it receives a share, that is inappropriate for a city that me-aningful and rich in terms of culture and urbanity. A proper website, that uses the highest standards regarding design and technicalities offers a city the chance to communicate strong messages and to portray itself broad-ly. New York City (see figure 4.08) confirms its general image as a city of pop-culture and fashion by placing famous musicians in front of the well known skyline. Hong Kong (see figure 4.09) and Tokyo (see figure 4.10) refer to typical, famous events or activities and landscape features. The case of Tokyo shows the dynamic character of the website – cities can react to events instantly and change the topic afterwards within the boundaries of the communication strategy. Dubai (see figure 4.11.) is stressing on its impressive skyline by offering different pictures of its skyscrapers, whe-reas Amsterdam (see figure 4.12) points out its calm and slow character by showing comfortable bicycles and flowery walls. Historical buildings in combination with food, as a symbol of a certain lifestyle, are portrayed in the website of San Francisco (see figure 4.13) by showing the Golden Gate Bridge next to fine hamburgers.

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CONCLUSION

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Conclusion

The research intended to analyse a place brand‘s complexity. In that regard, the focus lied on understanding the various elements that create the image of a place. It was shown, that the available scientific literature tackles a wide range of diffe-rent critical dimensions as well as strategic possibilities which shape, influence or position the place brand. The research grouped these elements in two categories, according to their intention to contribute to the branding into: 1) intended influ-ences, which deliberately try to create a place brand according to certain visions and strategies and 2) unintended elements, which do contribute to the generati-on of a place brand, even though they might be bare any intention to do so. Consequently, the research‘s structure distinguished between both the intended and the unintended influences on the place brand of Cairo. In doing so, particular focus was set on 1) tourism, as an important economical sector, and ; 2) Germans, as a very important visitor nation for Egypt. The current situation of Egyptian tourism is particularly interesting from the place branding point of view, since it faces a crisis which seems to be related to the overall political situ-ation – a severe loss of visitors, especially from Germany, is the main symptom that might indicate a damage of the place imagination of Egypt held by foreig-ners. Therefore it is an interesting time to analyse the existing brand of Cairo and compare it to the brand awareness and image of Germans tourists and potential tourists. First, the official tourism promotion was analysed, since it represents the main voice of intended brand creation. The content of the official website and the official video portrayal was investigated and clustered according to different re-search interests. It became evident, that the clear focus of all promotional effort is to highlight Egypt‘s two most important tourism products - culture and sun &

152

sea. Both are represented with great dominance. It is remarkable that the tou-rism promotion of Egypt allocates only a small share to Cairo. The city received only little additional attribution in regard to night-life, cityscape, shopping or even greenery. The image of the city, that is being created, is a purely one-sided accumulation of flowery descriptions – dominant impressions of being in Cairo like traffic, dust or noise are completely abandoned. The capital is in all the digital promotion material portrayed in a shy way, that uses strong beautification, which implies the risk to create a brand-promise that can not be fulfilled. Furthermore, Cairo disappeared almost completely in the promotion material done after 2011 – it seems as if officials fear the city might represents to much negative associa-tions. By analysing the brand identity and its elements, it was possible to narrow down the essential brand-messages of Egypt, with a focus on Cairo. The country and its capital are characterized as a unique experience and as places that every person should see. By using adjectives like majestic, breathtaking, or speechless Egypt is described as extraordinary and incomparable. The slogan where it all began / wo alles begann highlights the idea of Egypt‘s global importance and meaning as a place of cultural origin. Furthermore, the official tourism promo-tion uses many human attributions like friendly, hospitable, welcoming etc. to describe the place as an adorable destination. Currently, the promotion material purely focusses on the bright side of the country – it should be doubted, that the given brand promise can be kept. By paying attention to the unintended branding influences, the research sample checked especially the media depiction of Egypt, which appeared to be highly problematic for the place brand of Egypt and Cairo, due to a strong domi-nance of negative topics. The news portray of a place represents for many people abroad the only source of information they receive about it. Egypt faces the for-tunate situation to be associated with different strong images related to history and monuments. The Pyramids might be known to almost every person on earth and function as a representation of Egypt. People learned about the Pharaoh-times at school, read about it or saw something in television. Therefore strong ideas already exist in people‘s minds about the place, which will most probably not vanish or loose power due to new, negative information about the country. Nevertheless, the current news depiction is highly problematic for the Egypt and has the potential to harm the brand heavily. Especially from the touristic point of view it is disastrous for the place image to be continuously connected to violence, insecurity, demonstrations or terror.

CONCLUSION

153

Apart from the news depiction, public diplomacy was understood as an uninten-ded aspect of place branding as well, even though researchers like Anholt (2010) call it an essential part of place branding. Still, its importance and potential for the place brand creation is widely not acknowledged, which is why it is consi-dered an unintended aspects of branding in this research. Public diplomacy, as the attempt to influence foreign public attitudes through international relations, seems to be an almost unused area in the case of Egypt currently. Only very few organisations exist, mostly as sub-entity of the embassy. In comparison to the number of German foundations in Egypt and their activities, the small size of Egypt‘s attempts becomes evident. In that regard Egypt misses an important chance to communicate positive information to the German audience – trust could be created and people abroad would have the chance to built up a relation to Egypt. Clearly, a great potential lies in the field of public diplomacy, which can be activated by acknowledging its essential meaning for place branding. Two surveys have been done to analyse the brand awareness of people, who are addressed by the promotional effort. The first survey targeted poten-tial tourists from Germany, who have factually never been to Egypt and second survey those Germans, who have been tourists in Egypt. By using differing ap-proaches, the participants' general perception, knowledge and attitude towards Egypt was investigated. It became evident, that the vast majority of both surveys connects culture, especially the Pharaohnic one, and sun & sea with the country, which matches exactly with the core value presented by the official promotion. Surprisingly, Cairo was for the participants of survey one (potential-tourists) the main topic that they could relate to. Descriptions were often detailed and close to the reality. The city was mainly associated with chaos, crowds of people, ba-zaars, exotic smells, heat or adventurous walks in oriental streets. The majority of the people of both surveys was positive about (potential) holiday in Egypt. Especially the tourists of survey two stressed on the local people as an important quality of the country. Only few of the tourists knew any kind of promotional output of egypt.travel. Nevertheless, the general image about Egypt is close to the promoted image. Cairo represents an exception, since it was narrated mostly more realistic than portrayed by the official entity egypt.travel. At the same time a certain fascination seems to exist for the capital and its exotic, hectic and ali-en urbanity – a possible asset for the destination, that is completely neglected by the promotional efforts. Generally, the results of both surveys can be sum-marized as a positive attitude towards Egypt and Cairo. Still, apart from that, it was obvious that severe concerns exist regarding the political situation in Egypt.

154

Clearly, the image held by people is mainly created by factors different from any branding campaign. The weak status of safety, political repression, violence, riots and terror attacks are a fundamental part of Egypt‘s current image, which means a severe damage for the place brand. The important vision, announced by Tou-rism Minister Hesham Zazou, to “improve the image of the country”, will have to tackle these issues ambitiously. In special regard to Cairo, the research discovered main strengths of the place brand in regard to the vision stated above: 1) local people, wich were main-ly perceived and imagined as welcoming, kind-hearted, funny and hospitable; 2) culture, which is a very strong channel of brand communication for Egypt that most foreign people can somehow relate to; 3) the strong visual image, that is de-rived from the well known monuments that symbolize the city and the country. At the same time the following weaknesses were detected: 1) state‘s re-putation, which is generally bad and connected to the negative news depiction; 2) safety, that represents maybe the most problematic hindrance to the tourism, since security is the most important precondition for tourism 3) public diploma-cy, which is currently not activated from the place branding point of view. According to the strengths and weaknesses, it was possible to give recom-mendations that should support the process of improving the image of Egypt and especially of Cairo. Within a four layer strategy, the implementation of a public diplomacy structure in partner countries appears to be a needed step to reach the goal. Aiming at strengthening the relations to a foreign public and creating trustworthiness, the public diplomacy should be build up systematically through the layers policy, program, plan and project. Parallel to that, Cairo needs to be understood as a place that needs an own brand promotion for tourism. Almost none of the cities that is competing with Cairo for tourists neglects the issue of branding the city for tourism as heavily as Cairo does - it needs to be understood as a basic standard of urban communi-cation. A complex visual communication strategy should to be established, that uses the strengths to cope with the weaknesses. It is important to create a visual communication that conveys honesty and that will consequently keep the given brand promise. In doing so, Cairo needs to be portrayed in a less flowery and more reality based way. The particular features of chaotic urbanity should be understood as an asset in regard to tourism, which should be used rather than be hidden. In that sense, the city‘s promotion needs to be embedded in a clever narration, that speaks of the vision with pride and self confidence. At the same time, the Cairo‘s place brand needs to continue using the extremely powerful

CONCLUSION

155

symbols and find ways to combine them with contemporary characteristics. The communication should implement strong digital tools, especially a very dynamic city-homepage that meets today‘s requirements and expectations in terms of de-sign and technicalities. The city has to invent an integrated and holistic brand communication approach, which connects all the important channels of digital communication like social media, viral commercials etc. in order to reach the target audience with the right message. As mentioned before, all place branding attempts face the dilemma of a very limited control over the actual image creation. No place will ever be able to eliminate the unintended brand influences, not even the strictest dictatorship that uses restrictions of speech and censorship. The broad range of influences on the image of a place can be understood as an implication of democracy. The ac-tors engaged deliberately in the intended branding of a place should understand it as an enriching challenge rather than an obstacle. Cairo and Egypt are gifted with globally known symbols of enormous power, that will always keep the place imagination of foreigners filled with positive associations. Nevertheless, Egypt needs to cope with the harmful elements on the place brand urgently in order to maintain strengths and to avoid a long lasting settling of negative imaginations.

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الخلاصة

الترويج الحضري )غير( المقصود لمدينة القاهرةالتأثيرات على نظرة السائح الألماني لعاصمة مصر

جريجور شوبف

في الوقت الحاضر تواجه الأماكن حاجة ماسة إلى تكوين علامتھا التجارية حتى تستطيع المنافسة مع غيرها على صعيد المواهب، العمل، الاستثمار، الخبراء أو السياحة. تعتمد مصر بشدة على قطاع السياحة

حيث أنه يمثل واحدا من أهم القطاعات لاقتصاد الدولة. ونتيجة لذلك، تم إيلاء اهتمام شديد إلى العلاماتالتجارية للمكان لأغراض السياحة. ة

للأسف، الأزمة السياسية الأخيرة أدت الى ضر السياحة بشكل كبير وتسببت في انخفاض شديد في أعداد الزائرين. من الواضح أن العلامة التجارية لمصر والقاهرة قد ضعفت بسبب هذه الحوادث. يركز هذا

البحث على العلامة التجارية الرسمية من القاهرة، ويسلط الضوء على الجوانب الإضافية التي تسھم في هذه العلامة. على الرغم من أن هذه الجوانب أصبحت جزءا من العلامة التجارية للمكان، الا أنھا خالية

من أي نية للتسويق. العلامات التجارية غير المقصودة تكون دافعا هاما وبعدا حساسا لأي علامة تجارية للمكان. يبدو أن العلامة التجارية لمصر والقاهرة قد تأثرت سلبا من قبل العلامات غير المقصودة مما

يدعو الى حاجة زيادة الوعي بھا. ة

كلمات البحث: الارتباط، المكان، اللاجئين، عمان، الأردن، الإحساس بالمكان، الھوية، الارتباط الفيزيائي، والارتباط الاجتماعي

إقرار

هذه الرسالة مقدمة في جامعة عين شمس وجامعة شوتجارت للحصول على درجة العمران المتكامل والتصميم المستدام. إن العمل الذي تحويه هذه الرسالة قد تم إنجازه بمعرفة الباحث سنة 2015

هذا ويقر الباحث أن العمل المقدم هو خلاصة بحثه الشخصي وأنه قد اتبع الإسلوب العلمي السليم في الإشارة إلى المواد المؤخوذه من المراجع العلمية كلٌ في مكانه في مختلف أجزاء الرسالة..

وهذا إقرار مني بذلك،،،

التوقيع:

الباحث: جريجور شوبف

التاريخ: 27/07/2015

التوقيع

تاريخ المناقشة:..............

أجيزت الرسالة بتاريخ:.............موافقة مجلس الجامعة .../.../... ختم الإجازة

موافقة مجلس الكلية .../.../...

07/27/2015

الترويج الحضري )غير( المقصود لمدينة القاهرةالتأثيرات على نظرة السائح الألماني لعاصمة مصر

مقدمة للحصول على درجة الماجستير في العمران المتكامل والتصميم المستدام

اعداد: جريجور شوبف

لجنة اشراف

جامعة شتوتجارت

جامعة عين شـــــــمس

ا.د. محمد تامر الخرزاتي

أستاذ التخطيط والتصميم العمراني

جامعة عين شمس

أ.د. استريد لاي

أستاذ العمران الدولي


د.منى حلمي

أستاذ مساعد غير متفرغ، جامعة شتوتجارت

أستاذ مساعد العمارة والعمران بجامعة دار الحكمة،

المملكة العربية السعودية

المشرفون

ا.د. محمد تامر الخرزاتيأستاذ التخطيط والتصميم العمراني

جامعة عين شمس

أ.د. استريد لاي أستاذ العمران الدولي


يوليو 2015

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