São Paulo – In February, Egypt continued to register losses in the tourism sector. According to data from the period released this Monday (4) by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (Capmas), Egypt received 346,500 tourists in February, a 46% decline over the same period of last year. According to information published by the state-owned newspaper Al Ahram, the explosion of a Russian airline jet last year continues to affect the flow of foreigners into the Arab country.
On October 31, 2015, an Airbus of Russian airline Metrojet exploded soon after taking off from the Sinai Peninsula, in a terrorist attack claimed by the Islamic State. The 224 people onboard died and several European airlines stopped flying the Sinai route since then.
According to data from Capmas published by the newspaper, visitors from Western Europe accounted for 35.6% of the tourists going to Egypt in February. Travelers coming from the Middle East were 26.7% of the total, with 14.1% of all tourists coming from Eastern Europe. Germany, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine were the countries that sent the most tourists to Egypt in each of these regions.
Still according to data from Capmas, in February foreigners spent 1.8 million nights in the country. In the same period of last year, they were there for 5.6 million nights. The country estimates that the tourism sector missed out on USD 1.2 billion to USD 1.3 billion in the last four months.
Egypt’s new minister of Tourism, Yehia Rashed, said Sunday that he will meet next week with representatives of 12 low-cost Airlines. The purpose of the meeting is to attract to Egypt tourists of different markets, especially those not attended by the local airline, EgyptAir. He also pointed out that high spending by tourists from the Gulf countries could “quickly” increase the sector’s revenues.
Last week, the Egypt Tourism Authority attended, in the city of São Paulo, the fair World Travel Market (WTM) Latin America, which aims at the companies of the sector. The director of the Egypt Tourism Authority for the United States, Canada and Latin America, Gawaher Ali Youssed, said to ANBA at the time that she is planning to attract more than the 12,000 Brazilians that visited the country last year. She acknowledged that Egypt is trying to increase security for tourists so that the sector can resume growth.
In 2010, Egypt reached a record in tourism revenues: more than USD 12 billion, but in 2011 the country faced a political crisis, which resulted in the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak and the deposition of his successor, Mohamed Morsi. Last year, with the country already under the command of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, tourism revenues totaled USD 6.1 billion, a decline of 15% over 2014. The total of foreigners, 6.3 million, was 6% less than the previous year.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
