Speaking to TTG at WTM London, Sami Tounsi, trade manager at the Tunisian National Tourist Office said the Sousse attack of June 2015 (when 38 tourists were gunned down by an Islamic State terrorist) was “unprecedented”, and he admitted that the security force in Tunisia at the time had been “unfit for purpose to protect tourists.”

However Tounsi said the message at this year’s WTM London was that the North African country remained “open for business”.

“The good thing now is that the Tunisia government and the UK government are working hand-in-hand to improve security standards, training the military and the police,” he said.

“Tunisia never experienced such an atrocity before. Before the attack we had no cameras in hotels but now we have them in the hotels, on the roads and in the resorts.”

Tounsi said the slump in visitor numbers had prompted the country to focus on new markets, including its own region with the local market of Tunisia and Algeria representing 40% of all bookings this year.

“It means this year that the summer season was saved”.

The country is also hoping to start attracting the Chinese market later this year.

“We opened a tourist office there two years ago, so the infrastructure is now in place and negotiations are currently taking place to secure a new flight between Beijing and Tunis,” he said.

“We’re targeting around 50,000 Chinese tourists in the next two years, focusing on our Roman ruins and cultural offerings”. But Tounsi added that this number was “still not good enough” because the European market had previously been vast for Tunisia.

“Every year Tunisia used to have 6.5 million tourists, and Europeans represented 60% of these,” he said. “The total number of Chinese visitors that we’re targeting we used to receive in a week from the UK.”

Figures have started to improve from markets such as France – Tunisia’s number one source market – as well as Russia, but Tounsi said the number of European visitors remained minimal.

“In 2014 we received one million visitors from France, and this year we had 300,000. For the UK it dropped from 425,000 down to 18,000.”

Both Spain and Sweden recently lifted their travel bans to Tunisia, but restrictions are still in place for the UK, Ireland, Holland and Belgium.

Tounsi said he was hopeful though that the UK ban would be lifted – or at least eased on the key tourist areas of Hammamet, Port el Kantaoui and Djerba – within a year.

He added that Tunisia was braced to kickstart a new marketing campaign as soon as this happened, which he said would not just be focused on its beach offering.

“It will concentrate on the diverse culture, the Sahara and the nature that we have [Tunisia has 15 national parks], as well as the beach. We need to show the other face of Tunisia.”

He added that if tourists were able to return, it would also send a strong message to terrorism. “Tourism is one of the major pillars of our economy,” he said. “If the ban remains for another year, this sends a very strong message to terrorists that they are winning.”