Venancio Lopez, head of destination services for the operator in the country, told the Royal Courts of Justice today (January 18), that travel firms had raised the concern during a meeting with British Embassy officials and Tunisian tourism chiefs to discuss security improvements.
Lopez, who is also managing director at Tunisie Voyages, a subsidiary of Tui that operated excursions in the North African country, said operators desired more security in Sousse but did not want to make guests feel “uncomfortable”.
The meeting was held on May 25 2015 in Tunis - two months after the terror attack at the Bardo National Museum - and almost directly one month before the Sousse attack in which gunman Seifeddine Rezgui shot dead 38 people, including 30 Britons.
"We wanted to increase the security in general, but we didn’t want tourists to be scared by seeing an army of police,” Lopez said.
The inquest heard that during the meeting, Lopez said Tunisian authorities “verbally” announced plans to introduce 400 new tourist police to patrol beaches and keep watch at hotels.
Lopez, who was flown to London to give evidence, told the coroner: “I don’t know if, at that moment, they [the newly contracted police] were active. They have to train.”
When asked about security guards, counsel for 20 of the Sousse attack victims, Andrew Ritchie QC, read from Lopez’s statement which said that in his experience “not all hotels we used had their own security guards. The four- and five-star hotels tended to.”
Lopez told the hearing his job was handling “passive security” for the hotels, such as health and safety concerns, and it was the jurisdiction of the Tunisian Ministry of Interior to deal with “active security”, including police patrols and armed guards.
In his statement, Lopez said he believed private security guards in Tunisia were not able to “carry weapons of any sort” under the law.
Ritchie later told the hearing that the coroner had received advice from a legal firm prior to the inquest beginning, which said it was possible for hotels to request to arm their guards although no proof existed that the wish would be granted.
Ritchie also questioned the validity of Lopez being sent as Tui’s sole representative to a series of meetings with tourism and embassy officials following the Bardo attack due to his lack of training dealing with security planning and procedure.
In reply, Lopez said he had been chosen to go due to his role of “dealing with problems with clients”.
The inquest also heard that the Imperial Marhaba hotel, where the attack took place, had six CCTV cameras, less than a number of nearby hotels, which had as many as 49 in operation.
The inquests continue.
