With Spring holidays in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf just around the corner (March 23 to April 1), followed by a much longer summer vacation 4 months down the road, Switzerland has measures put in place to ensure that holidayers coming from the region would be relaxed and hassle free from the very start. Noting that the Gulf Cooperation Council countries are a strategic market for tourism, Switzerland has unveiled this year a new set of packages to further attract Saudi tourists as well as others in the region. The Swiss government, taking notice of the immense potential of the region, allocated CHF1.1 million (SR4.5 million) for tourism promotion in GCC. For this year, the government forecast that tourists from the GCC would grow by 5 percent, bringing the overnights to nearly 450,000 mark. Branding year 2012 as the "Year of Water", Switzerland Tourism will promote the theme of water in all forms, such as lakes, rivers, glaciers, activities on water; hotels on water, and health & beauty (water as a source) - with all its amenities. In a recent Gulf tour by a delegation of the Switzerland Tourism (ST) and some representatives of various sectors of tourism in Switzerland, they noted that in 2011 alone, 7 percent or 126,360 tourists from the Gulf were Saudis. Citing recent statistics, Jorg Peter Krebs, director for India, Middle East and Africa at Switzerland Tourism, said the citizens of GCC countries are on top of the list of biggest tourist spenders, dishing out 530 Swiss francs (SR2,172.61) a day, placing the region among the top 5 strategic growth markets of Switzerland. This year, Switzerland Tourism unveiled a bunch of marketing packages to further increase the number of tourists from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, among them, the quicker processing of travel requirements aside from discounted prices on travel tickets and hotel rates. Hans Stalder, consul general of Switzerland in Jeddah, said it was now easier for Saudi nationals to obtain visas to visit Switzerland. He further said after Switzerland became part of the Schengen Agreement (Dec. 12. 2008), a traveler who gets a Schengen visa can enter Switzerland without having to obtain an extra visa. He said Schengen visa applications for males are now processed in three days. For women and children, the visa is issued in one day and diplomats could get it on the same day. Switzerland Tourism and its partners continuously strive to provide renewed tourism offers aimed at achieving the promotion of tourism market in the Gulf, Krebs added. And as the prolonged eurozone debt crisis takes its toll on the European economy, impacting the Swiss tourism industry, Krebs said Switzerland Tourism sets sights on Brazil, China, India and Russia aside from the long-established prime market Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to boost Swiss tourism industry. Moreover, to ensure high standards of comfort for travelers, Switzerland Tourism's website was launched to assist the reservation through a database of more than 13,000 hotels, apartments, train tickets, and promote travelers transport from all over the world and to all the cities of Switzerland. __
