Egypt’s hotel reservations in Christmas are ‘very high’

CAIRO – 30 November 2017: Reservations for Christmas holidays in the hotels of the Red Sea, Luxor and Aswan are very high, compared to the same period last year, Magdi Nagib of the Chamber of Tourist Facilities said Thursday.

He added that the flow of Arab and European tourists is improving, saying that hotels in Upper Egypt are on the rebound. He said that hotels in Luxor and Aswan will see a boom during the current winter season.

However, hotels in the popular Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh is still suffering from the repercussions of the downing of a Russian airliner in Sinai in late 2015, Nagib said.

Cairo hotels are also seeing a boom in the current period, which reflects the stable political and security situation in Egypt, according to Nagib.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s main foreign currency earners, which has suffered several blows since the 25 January Revolution of 2011, but it has been picking up recently; especially that Egypt has now become a cheaper destination for many tourists around the world after floating the local currency.

Tourism revenues jumped 211.8 per cent year-on-year to $5.3 billion in the first nine months of 2017, compared to $1.7 billion the year before.

The number of tourists who visited Egypt in that time jumped 55.3 per cent to 5.9 million, with European visitors reaching 3.2 million, an 85 per cent increase from the previous year.

Hilton Worldwide announced recently that it aims to increase the number of hotel rooms it manages in Egypt by 40 percent by the end of 2022.