São Paulo – Egypt received 5.7 million visitors from January to July this year, a 28% decline over the same period of 2010. The information was supplied by the Egyptian Tourism Authority (ETA).
“We passed through a revolution, a dictator stepped down, a new regime is coming… The first year is a transition period,” the president of tour operator Gezira Travel, Nader El Biblawi, told Gulf News, a newspaper based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
Despite the reduction, the number of foreign visitors in the first seven months of 2011 was higher than the total that Brazil receives in one entire year. Last year, for instance, 5.16 million foreigners have been to Brazil.
Most of the tourists that visited Egypt were from Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France, according to the publication. The number of Arab visitors dropped 18.6% in the first seven months of the year. In July alone, the decline was 28.5%.
“The protests are especially concentrated in Tahrir Square, where there are the six hotels preferred by the Arabs,” added Biblawi, according to the newspaper. In addition to the popular uprising in Egypt itself, political unrest in other countries in the region has contributed to the decline in tourism.
To the president of Gezira Travel, the summer season, which runs from June to August, “was worse than expected.” “The tourism sector was most affected by the political unrest in Egypt. Sure, the real estate and stock market were all affected, but tourism was the most hit by the revolution in my opinion,” he said, according to Gulf News.
According to the head of International Tourism at the ETA, Samy Mahmoud, the number of visitors from other Arab countries could have been even lower had it not been for the many Libyans who entered the country to flee from civil conflict in the neighbouring nation; there was an increase in the number of Palestinians, as a result of the opening of the Rafah Passage, at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt; and the inflow of Sudanese people increased as well.
Biblawi hopes the industry will recover in the winter season, late this year and early in the next one.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
