São Paulo – In May, Egypt received 845,642 tourists, growth of 19.3% over the same month last year, according to information disclosed by Dow Jones news agency, citing the local government’s statistics department. The growth is important as tourism is one of the main economic activities in the country, and it was strongly affected by the Arab Spring.
The agency pointed out, however, that the figure is still far from that of May 2010, prior to the upheaval that ousted president Hosni Mubarak. In that month, Egypt received 1.2 million tourists.
The number of tourists nights spent in Egypt in May was 9.8 million, against 7.3 million in the same month in 2011, according to Dow Jones.
The agency also informed that in May, the minister of Tourism, Mounir Fakhry Abd Elnour, said that the number of tourists in Egypt had grown 32% in the first quarter, as against the same period last year.
*Translated by Mark Ament
