An especial welcome to our Chinese, Spanish and German visitors from Flats in Luxor, Egypt. Our website has been translated just for you and we hope to have other languages shortly for Russian, French and Portuguese. .
The Flats in Luxor website goes multilingual reaching out to visitors from all over the world.
Everyone knows that China is becoming a serious new tourism market and we wanted to make a special welcome to visitors from that country. Independent travel is still a new concept for the Chinese and we are the first to make them feel that independent does not mean lack of support. We welcome Chinese visitors and hope to encourage them to find the real Egypt beyond the group tour. http://www.flatsinluxor.co.uk/language/chinese/index.html
German guests are common in Egypt and there are many facilities on the West Bank that they can relax in, restaurants run by Egyptians with German partners and even a German cultural group. Our new German website http://www.flatsinluxor.co.uk/language/german/index.html makes sure potential German guests understand our offering and find us in the search engines easily. We have had German guests in the past and we look forward to welcoming even more.
Spanish is one of the most common world languages and we want to increase our exposure to South America, which has so many common historical monuments. Jane says “I am sure South American visitors will find Egypt a fascinating place to visit. Hassan Fathy the famous architect built a village in Mexico as well as Luxor so we have links throughout the ages.” http://www.flatsinluxor.co.uk/language/spanish/index.html
Jane continues “We are going to be developing the website in other languages, there are many Russian visitors to the Red Sea but few visit the historical sites. By putting our website in Russian we will bring our offering to this large tourism market. Both Japanese and French versions are also planned.
Since 2003 we have been providing accommodation and tours to people all over the world but most of our guests have been English speaking from America, Britian, New Zealand and Australia. We hope putting our website into other languages we will increase the number of international guests.”
Flats in Luxor was founded in 2003 by Jane Akshar and Mahmoud Jahlan, their mission to provide high quality flats or apartments for the tourist market and to enable them to enjoy a unique and individual tour of this fascinating and historic country.
Having rented a flat in Luxor, Egypt themselves and been disappointed by the standards of cleanliness and lack of facilities they perceived a demand for Western standard flats in Luxor. For both those guests and those staying in hotels they also provide guided tours and all aspects of holidaying in Egypt.
Jane was a computer specialist by background and an Egyptologist of 40 years. She utilised her IT contacts to set up a professional website with availability calendar and booking database. Jane says ‘I was over the moon when I found the domain name FlatsinLuxor was available. However I wished I had realised that Americans have no idea what a flat is. They would call it an apartment and being as our market is international this often leads to confusion.’
Although Jane has plenty of IT, sales and marketing experience she had never worked in tourism before. That was Mahmoud’s side of the business, as a local he had worked with tourists in Luxor since he was young, knew everything there was to know and had all the contacts. The internet was an ideal medium for their business and utilising her Egyptology expertise Jane built up a dedicated following in the online Egyptology community which she used to publicise their business. Jane goes on ‘Mahmoud taught me everything about tourist, tourism and renting flats. We made a few mistakes at the beginning, the flats today are not the same as those early days and the swimming pool came later but everyone was supportive of the business. We still have repeat bookings from those early guests and we are in touch with many of them
Now some 6 years later their company Flats in Luxor Group, which is registered in Egypt, have 4 apartment blocks with 21 flats and lots of land for development, some sold but the majority are available for holiday rentals. They feature in the Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Responsible Travel, Tour Egypt, Trip Advisor and Virtual Tourist. They offer exciting and unusual tours which include the more remote places in Egypt, like Tel el Amarna and sailing holidays on traditional feluccas through www.sailthenile.com
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