JEDDAH: Austria has further upgraded its tourist services in the interest of travelers coming from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). “With our excellent and growing tourist infrastructure, we expect many more Saudi families to visit us during the coming vacation season,” Klaus Ehrenbrandtner, Middle East director of the Austrian National Tourist Office, told reporters on the sidelines of a road show marked by a workshop on Sunday night.
Last year, he said, about 100,000 visitors from the GCC spent 365,000 overnights in the country of great outdoors. Their average stay was of three and a half days. “In the last three years, the number of visitors from the GCC jumped by 165 percent and we expect further increases in the coming years,” Ehrenbrandtner said. An attractive feature of Austria, aside from its cordiality and hospitality, is its lakes, spas, springs and mountains. Above all, it is a multicultural country, which is visited by 30 million tourists a year from the world over, 50 percent of them from Germany alone.