On the occasion of the official opening of La Residence des Cascades Hotel as well as Les Thermes Marins des Cascades in Soma Bay, Hurghada, H.E. Mr. Ahmed Al Maghraby - Minister of Tourism and H.E. General Saad Abou Reida - Governor of Red Sea cut the ribbon after being welcomed by Dr Farid Saad - Chairman and Mr Riad Loutfi - General Manager of the hotel on Dec.18th, 2004.

Founded in 1947, Messe Düsseldorf currently has a workforce of around 600, with consolidated sales for 2004 totalling EUR 300 million. Around 29.500 exhibitors presented their products and services to 1.8 million visitors in 17 exhibition halls with a gross area of some 252,000 m².

Trade fairs in Germany are everything other than “German”. The people who crowd and hurry or saunter past the exhibition stands and through the halls, subway stations, bars and restaurants come from all over the world. This why from time to time you hear different languages; French, Russian, English, Polish, Arabic, Italian, Dutch beside Deutech. Consequently, international flair really is the major asset of German fairs in the face of worldwide competition.

Of particular interest this year was that most of the countries devastated by the Tsunami were there in force with their governments stepping in to fund the leasing of large stands for their diving operators to maintain their presence in the international market given that the local operators could not afford to exhibit after the disaster.
A clear sign of official support and appreciation of the importance of dive travel tourism to the national economy.

This year many exhibitors from the Egyptian Red Sea were exhibiting in the show, a testament of how important the German market is to Red Sea diving (German divers remain the number 1 nationality visiting the Red Sea).

This effort from Red Sea operators was parallel with a new strategy from Red Sea Association to market the Red Sea as environmentally friendly diving destination with almost 500 kg of environmental cards, brochures, stickers, posters & books given to the visitors for free to highlight and explain all the efforts being undertaken to protect the environment and increase environmental awareness. During the show, representatives of the Association Mohsen Anwar and Mohamed Habib conducted numerous meetings and interviews with members of the media as well as representatives of tour operators, diving federations etc.
International Trade shows such as Boot are of great importance for the Red Sea market, so we sent more than 120kg of marketing materials the Netherlands Diving Show and the Paris Dive Show which were held shortly after the Boot Show. Thanks to the kind efforts of Aquanaut Diving Centres and United Divers Diving Centre, Safaga for assisting with this task. This year, we used the Boot as a communication platform to discuss with tour operators and Red Sea visitors etc. various issues, listen to their comments and answer their questions which were quite a few about rules and regulations, safety, environment and quality etc.
This was a very useful exercise in assessing what the market place needs from our destination and also to let the market know that their opinion matters and that there are organizations in Egypt who actually work hard to make it a better and safer place for them.
All in all, we feel that this year our presence as a destination was positive and we look forward to being able to repeat it in as many gatherings as possible.