São Paulo – The amount of foreign tourists in Egypt was down 41.9% in July from July 2015, as per numbers made public this Monday (29) by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) according to the local daily Al Ahram. Last month, Egypt welcomed roughly 529,000 visitors from abroad, down from 912,000 in July a year earlier.
The reason was a reduced influx of people from Russia, a major source of tourists to Egypt. In October 2015, shortly after taking off from the resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh heading for Saint Petersburg, a Russian airline Metrojet plane crashed on the Sinai Peninsula after a bomb went off. All 224 passengers died. Since then, all Russian flights to Egypt have been suspended.
Turkey, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom followed suit. Russian tourist numbers to Egypt fell 60%, with British tourists down 17.5%, German tourists down 10.4% and Polish tourists down 3.8%. On the other hand, visitor numbers from Arab countries went up. In July, 233,000 Arab citizens travelled to Egypt, up 28.1% from 182,000 in July 2015.
The Egyptian Ministry of Finance is expecting to gross USD 4 billion to USD 4.5 billion worth of tourism revenues this year. In 2015, the number was USD 6.1 billion. The best year ever for Egyptian tourism was 2010, before the uprisings that overthrew two presidents. In that year, tourism grossed USD 12.5 billion, with over 14 million people visiting the country.
A delegation from Russia is expected to travel to Egypt in September to go over security measures at airports, before resuming flights in October. Germany and Poland have resumed flights to the Sinai, and Turkey is expected to resume flying to Sharm El-Sheikh in September.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
