Egypt’s tourism revenues jump 123% YoY in 2017

CAIRO – 14 January 2018: Egypt’s tourism revenues jumped 123.5 percent year-on-year to $7.6 billion in 2017, Reuters cited a government official as saying.

The number of tourists who visited Egypt in that time increased 54 percent to 8.3 million, the official said.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s main foreign currency sources that suffered from several blows in recent years. It was hit hard by a Russian travel ban, in place since November 2015, after a Russian airliner was downed over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board.

However, Russia has agreed to the resumption of direct flights to Egypt last month in a positive sign for the sector.

Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov said flights between Moscow and Cairo could restart by early February on both EgyptAir and Aeroflot, the Russian carrier. The ban, however, was not lifted on flights to the popular Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, but it is expected to be lifted soon.

Around 5.9 million tourists visited Egypt during the first nine months of 2017, already an improvement on 2016 which saw only 5.4 million tourists throughout the year, according to figures from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

Despite the leap in figures, they remain below the 2010 peak levels, when over 14.5 million tourists visited Egypt, bringing in around $12.5 billion in revenue.