Open Skies in Tunisia: Thrifty Visitors May Gain at Expense of TunisAir
Bernard Yaros
Thrifty European tourists and businessmen looking to make a trip to Tunisia in the near future may have been heartened by yesterday’s clarification from Minister of Transport Abdelkarim Harouni. On his Facebook page, he dispelled speculations that talks between Tunisia and the European Union (EU) commission concerning a pending bilateral open-skies agreement had been suspended and stated that they will continue throughout the first six months of 2012.
Open skies is a liberalization scheme of air transport. Barriers of entry to participant countries’ airline carriers are reciprocally lifted as well as regulations on all forms of air transportation – cargo or passenger – within their sovereign borders.
Since an open-skies agreement may encourage the participation of more airline carriers within signatory countries’ air-transport sectors, the consequent competition tends to bring air-travel prices down, to the benefit of cost-conscious travelers.
To see an example of this phenomenon, you only have to go to Expedia.com and do a quick search for non-stop, round-trip flights between Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and Casablanca, Morocco, via Air France. On the results page, the price should be around $330. If you trawl your standard travel websites again for such flights between CDG and Tunis, you may be surprised to find that travelling from CDG to Morocco is nearly a $100 cheaper than to Tunis.
Since 2004, Morocco has followed an open-sky agreement with the EU. Tunisia entered into negotiations with the EU in January 2011 concerning a potential bilateral open-skies agreement that would be effective as of November 2011. However, last September the Ministry of Transport announced that the date for its implementation would be pushed back to May 2012.
On Monday, suspicions that open-skies negotiations between the two parties had been called off indefinitely were sparked by a declaration made by Habib Mekki, Director of Civil Aviation at the Transport Ministry. “Talks are deferred until recovery of normal operations of national air carriers since the latter are hit by the special conditions experienced by the country after the revolution,” said Mekki to TAP, the state news agency. Afif Kchouk, director and editor-in-chief of Tourism Info, a bimonthly magazine that covers the sector, thought that the open-skies negotiations between Tunisia and the EU had indeed been tabled in an interview with Tunisia Live prior to Harouni’s clarification yesterday.
For Majed Hadj’Ali, a business lawyer at MH Avocats and advocate for the liberalization of many of Tunisia’s sectors, the continuation of the open-skies talks may be a step in the right direction for the national tourism industry. The number of non-resident entries into Morocco jumped from 5,476,713 in 2004 when the open-skies agreement was enacted to around 9,300,000 in 2010. Hadj’Ali pointed to the gaping discrepancy between the numbers of tourists that visit Fès and Kairouan, both historical cities in Morocco and Tunisia respectively that provide the same cultural experiences. Fès simply outperforms Kairouan in this domain, said Hadj’Ali.
Number of Non-Resident Entries in Morocco and Tunisia from 2001 to 2010Data from Morocco’s Ministry of Tourism & National Institute of Statistics
However, the idea that an open-skies accord would necessarily usher in more tourism for Tunisia to the extent that it did in Morocco’s case is flawed in Kchouk’s eyes. Morocco’s logistical capacity in air transport in 2004 was more developed than Tunisia’s and consequently fit to expand and absorb greater numbers of airline passengers.
Air Transport in Morocco and Tunisia, number of passengers carried from 2001 to 2009 All Data from International Civil Aviation Organization, Civil Aviation Statistics of the World & ICAO staff estimates and compiled by the World Bank
An open-skies agreement would not only affect tourism. According to Habib Ben Slama, a TunisAir representative in Italy, it would in fact bring in more businessmen than tourists to the country. The resulting cost depreciation for air travel to Tunisia could induce more low-budget businesses to consider making the trip and setting up projects in the country, said Ben Slama.
A major obstacle that stands in the way of many liberalization projects, such as the open-skies agreement in Tunisia, is a mentality that balks at any apparent extension of foreign reach into national sectors, said Hadj’Ali. In 2009, a World Bank study showed that Tunisia ranked second to Hungary in restrictiveness of air passenger transport as a result of heavy price regulations in domestic aviation as well as the absence of open-skies agreements with the US and other Maghreb countries.
Restrictiveness Indices in Air Transport All Data from a 2009 World Bank Country Study, ‘Tunisia’s Global Integration: Second Generation of Reforms to Boost Growth and Employment’
This is a legacy that may be hard to upend. The outcome of an open-skies accord would most likely impact negatively TunisAir, the national flag carrier airline, as it would face greater competition in a sector that has been largely protected by the government.
If the open-skies agreement comes to fruition, Tunisians may have to accept that TunisAir could cede ground to European low-cost carriers like Ryanair or EasyJet. To stay competitive, not only must TunisAir upgrade operational capacity but also put its balance sheet in order.
Yesterday, TunisAir unions within the General Tunisian Workers’ Union demanded that the government intervene on behalf of the national airline that is weighed down by an estimated 135 million dinar debt. Imed Fatah, secretary-general for the union of TunisAir Express, was not entirely against the implementation of the ongoing open-skies negotiations. However, he said that now is not the time for Tunisia to sign onto such an agreement given the disastrous consequences that it would mean not only for TunisAir but other national airlines as well. Fatah considered that a time-frame of a year-and-a-half was more reasonable.
