Egypt aims for 30-40M international tourists yearly: minister

CAIRO – 22 November 2022: Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Ahmed Eissa presented before the House of Representatives Tuesday current figures on Tourism, and plans to enhance them.

The minister pointed out to the results of a study that has been carried out recently, where hundreds of millions were surveyed, and answered a question on whether they would like to visit Egypt. It turned out that 272 million tourists belonging to 12 different countries, expressed a desire to come to Egypt.

On the other hand, Eissa noted that Egypt has merely 211,000 hotel rooms (located in a total of 1,200 hotels), which are much less than the country's potential, and the ministry's target to make Egypt the travel destination of 30-40 million tourists a year.

To attain that goal, Egypt has to introduce 290,000 hotel rooms at a cost of at least $20 million. As for cruise ships, they have 15,000 rooms; however, occupancy is limited to just 5,000.  

Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced in September that the number of international tourists who visited Egypt in the first half of 2022 is 4.9 million, compared with 2.6 million tourists in the same period of the previous year.

Moreover, the statistics conducted by CAPMAS showed that the number of international tourists reached 8 million in 2021 compared to 3.7 million tourists in 2020, with an increase of 117.5%.

CAPMAS also noted that Eastern Europe recorded the first area for sending tourists during 2021 with 50.6%, followed by the Middle East with 18.9 %, then came Western Europe with 16.4 %, and Africa with 7.1%.

The total number of Arab tourists amounted to 2 million in 2021 compared to 0.9 million in 2020, with an increase of 114.9%.

The number of nights spent by tourists reached 52.6 million nights during the first half of 2022 (January- June) compared to 32.2 million nights during the same period of 2021 (January- June), with an increase of 63.6%.