Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Egyptian Tourism

The Egyptian tourism industry is back on track, with total arrivals in the past 12 months up 33.3% from 2016 to 2017.

The data, published by Colliers International, was released ahead of the Arabian Travel Market 2018, set to take place this year in Dubai from April 22-25. It is the leading global event for the Middle East inbound and outbound travel industry for the last 25 years.

Egypt, in particular, will be of major interest at this year’s show, with reports of projected growth across the board. Between 2018 and 2021, arrivals from North America will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 3.9% to 318,844. Driving this growth will be the cheaper Egyptian pound as well as government incentives for charter airlines carrying passengers on international flights.

Over the same period, visitor arrivals from Africa are also expected to grow, with a compound annual growth rate of 3.8%, to more than 300,901. Arrivals from the Middle East are expected to increase by 3% at compound annual growth rates, to over 1.34 million.

In contrast, European visitors, who’ve traditionally been the key source market for Egypt, are projected to have a 1.6% compound annual growth rate. In 2017, there were 5.2 million European arrivals.

The expected resurgence in visitors from North America, Africa and the Middle East will see both leisure and corporate travel in Egypt increase over the next four years. In anticipation, Egypt signed a three-year, US$66 million contract with advertising J. Walter Thompson to create promotional campaigns for 27 source markets. Moreover, major hotel companies have confirmed development projects, including Hilton’s Waldorf Astoria, Starwood’s St Regis and Swiss brand Mövenpick.

Tourism is one of the most important sectors in Egypt’s economy. More than 12.8 million tourists visited Egypt in 2008, providing revenues of nearly $11 billion. In 2009, the sector employed about 12 percent of Egypt’s workforce.[1]

In 2016, the minister of tourism expressed his concern and optimism about tourists returning to Egypt despite the downing of a Russian flight in 2015. The minister has said “we are all in this together” referring to terrorism that hurts a country’s tourism industry.[2][3][4]

In 2018 the UAE Minister of Happiness met with the Egyptian Minister of Tourism to discuss the philosophy of making tourists happy.[5]

In May 2018, the last chariot belonging to King Tut was escorted with a parade to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). It is hoped that the investment in this new museum will stimulate more tourism to Egypt.

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Nile cruise passengers have also been rising steadily over the last few years so maybe this is the time for you to take that special trip?

Visiting Egypt

As regular readers to the Nile Cruise blog will know Barbara and I spent the week before last (12th to the 20th November) in Egypt visiting Cairo, Luxor and Aswan and introducing ourselves to hotel owners and ships managers.

We are currently selling a lot of Nile cruises and we felt it was a good time to pop over and experience for ourselves how things are at the moment.

We try and visit Egypt as often as possible each year, not just for pleasure but to stay in touch with people that we know and people that we do business with.

We visited Egypt just after the revolution about 18 months ago and found that everyone we spoke to was really excited about the future. Some eighteen months later people are just as excited but perhaps a little tired of waiting for some of the things they were expecting to materialise.

So things are getting back to normal but the tourist industry is still a little slower than people hoped it would be this long after the revolution.

However, as a tourist its’ probably a great time to go as queues are a lot smaller than they would normally be and when you visit the ancient sites such as The Valley of The Kings or the Egyptian Museum in Cairo you will find them a lot less crowded than normal.

During our visit we visited some of the main sites that you would visit on a Nile cruise such as Kom Ombo Temple, Karnak Temple and The Valley of The Kings as well as The Pyramids, The Sphinx and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. However we didn’t’ sail this time but took the road journey from Luxor down to Aswan with the road hugging the banks of the Nile as we travelled. Continue reading “Visiting Egypt”