Egypt tourism figures to 'bounce back'

Mounir Fakhry Abd ElNour, Minister of Tourism of Egypt, has stated that the Ministry aims to raise the rates of tourism in Egypt to the levels witnessed in 2010.

"During the coming months, the Ministry of Tourism of Egypt seeks through their strategic plans to bring back tourism rates to their previous levels witnessed in 2010,” he asserted.

“We will focus our efforts on various global markets, particularly the Arab ones, where the rate of Arab tourists during the first three months of this year has witnessed a growth of about 62.9% compared with the overall rate of increase in visitors during the first quarter, which only amounted to 32%."

The Ministry of Tourism’s strategy will focus on what it said was “Egypt's willingness to receive tourists throughout the year and to work on organizing various artistic and cultural events and festivals”.

The strategy also emphasised the importance of strengthening the Ministry and ETA’s presence and participation in the most important tourism fairs in Arab countries in addition to increasing press trips to Egypt by inviting representatives of the most important Arab media outlets to shed light on Egypt as a tourist destination.
Furthermore, H.E. Abd ElNour pointed out that the Ministry's participation at ATM this year illustrated the unique relationship that brings the UAE and Egypt together.

"Through its strategy, the Ministry communicated with travel agencies and hotel establishments to urge them to provide more offers and programs specifically designed for Arab tourists,” he asserted.

“During the next few days, the fruits of these communication and cooperation efforts with travel agencies will present themselves through the competitive prices to be offered in the international travel and tourism market compared with different countries around the globe. Additionally, this cooperation will result in an increase in the diversity of tourism products offered by Egypt to meet the needs of all Arab tourists segments which suit their different tastes."

H.E. continued: "I expect the tourism flow to return to the tourism levels Egypt recorded in 2010."

Records show that the number of Arab tourists who visited Egypt during the three months of this year is 483,834 tourists in 2012 compared to 296,980 tourists during the same period in 2011, which shows an increase of about 62.9%.

Furthermore, the number of nights Arab tourists spent in Egypt is about 7.4 million nights, compared to approximately 4 million nights in the first quarter of 2011, which again shows an increase 84.4%. In addition, the number of Emirati tourists during the first quarter of 2012 is 4,883 in oppose to 4,232 tourists in the same period of 2011, an increase of 15.4%. While the number of nights Emirati tourists spent at Egypt is approximately 61,000 nights compared to 57,000 nights of the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 6.4%.