After 18 months of travel restrictions, tourists can once
enjoy the beauty of ancient tombs.
Tourism accounts for 9% of the country's GDP, but according
to the tourism ministry, less than a quarter of the usual number of tourists
visited Egypt in 2020 - signaling a 55% fall in GDP.
The industry had already suffered from instability in the
country following the 2011 political unrest.
But since the beginning of 2021, authorities have started to
regain hope.
The government made the vaccination of tourism workers in
the South Sinai and the Red Sea governorates a top priority - that represents
about 2 million people given the vaccine in the country's most visited resorts.
COVID-19 restrictions for tourists are also relatively
light: a single negative PCR test upon arrival has been requested since July
2020.
"Tourism is starting to recover. If we look at the
pyramid or the Egyptian Museum, we will find a very large occupancy rate,
whether from internal or external tourism, especially after receiving Russian tourism
we began to see very large occupancy rate from external tourism in Sharm
El-Sheikh, Hurghada and also Marsa Alam," says Islam Fares, Director
general of the union of Arab tourist guides.
Ministry of Tourism statistics show a noticeable increase in
tourist numbers: since the beginning of 2021, Egypt has welcomed 300,000
tourists every month.
By April, this figure rose to more than half a million a
month, around 50% of visitors pre-pandemic.
"We look forward in the second half of 2020 (2021), and
after vaccinations began around the world and the arrival of Russian tourism at
Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada airports, to recover a little bit until we reach
the normal rates for the tourism sector," says Fares.
In early August, Russia resumed flights to Egyptian Red Sea
resorts, ending a ban that had lasted almost six years.
Moscow had banned direct flights to Egypt after the 2015
bombing of a Russian airliner shortly after it took off from the Red Sea resort
of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.
AP