Egypt Experiences Slump in Tourism since August

As stated in a news conference, Minister of Tourism, Hisham Zaazu said on Sunday that Egypt has been facing great slump in the tourism industry following the violence from the dispersal of sit-ins held by supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi, since August 14. The industry has been recording a low of around 80%.

According to the interview given to a channel, CBC, Zaazou revealed the tourism rate in July and the first half of August had fallen to 45%, and since then the fall has been constant until now recording about $1bn.

The 12 countries that had imposed travel warnings on Egypt. Countries like Germany, United Kingdom, Holland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and others have already lifted their alerts.  

Revealing the fact that Egypt had received delegations from Russia and Germany in the beginning of September to observe the situation in the Red Sea areas, he said, “We have waited for the situation to calm down and then we started to visit the countries to explain the situation and convince them to lift the travel alerts.”

Meanwhile, according to state-run Ahram Online, British tourism company Thomas Cook announced the resumption of tour by the end of September.

Expecting the crisis to end soon, Zaazou said that, the average spending per tourist has decreased from $85 to $64 per day, and Egypt received around 11.5m tourists in 2012.

As tourists to this place account around 70% from Europe and 20% from Gulf countries, Zaazou said the ministry had “decided to take emphasis on restoring those two main sources of tourism and create a positive image to the world.”

Accepting the fact that traffic from Gulf countries have decreased, Zaazou noted that it would turn around as, “several bookings are expected after Eid Al-Adha,” adding that they have agreed with the Ministry of Aviation to conduct direct flights between Jeddah and Riyadh, and Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurgada.

In order to regain the tourism in the country, Zaazou said that taking the help of Ministry of Telecommunication, webcams would be fixed in tourist places so that live images would be streamed on the internet for the tourists to check about the situation for themselves. “As of now there are five webcams placed in Red Sea area.”

Compensations would also be given for those who had suffered from tourism slump.

Countries like Germany, Russia, France, Spain, Sweden and Italy had imposed travel advice to their citizens with the fear of violence since August 14th. Some European travel agencies also had cancelled their trips to Egypt.