Parliament’s Tourism Committee hears ten ministries on boosting tourism

CAIRO - 8 February 2018: The Egyptian House of Representatives, particularly the Tourism and Civil Aviation Committee, will meet with ten concerned ministers of Egypt’s tourism section on Thursday to discuss strategies that could develop the tourism sector in Egypt.

Head of the Tourism and Civil Aviation Committee Sahar Talaat Mostafa said that an expanded meeting will be held to discuss the ways to boost tourism in Egypt through setting up a common plan for all tourism concerned parties to shoulder this responsibility to develop tourism and promote Egypt’s image abroad.

These parties would include the parliament to help resolve any barriers faced by the government in terms of old legislations and how to promote Egypt’s image abroad.

She added that many concerned ministers will attend the meeting including ministers of local development, antiquities, tourism, aviation, transport, interior, culture, education, higher education and finance along with the other relevant institutions.

She stressed that the committee has sent an invitation to the new Minister of Tourism Rania al-Mashat to provide a plan for improving tourism in the coming period.

A member of the Tourism and Civil Aviation Committee Hosny Hafez further remarked that without a common action plan between the concerned ministers of tourism there would be a decline in this sector, which is intrinsic to Egypt’s economy.

Hafez called on all the ministers to prepare their plans and a schedule to implement these plans to be submitted before the committee.

“Representatives from the Foreign Ministry should attend the meeting to be able through our ambassadors abroad to promote Egypt’s image abroad in coordination with the Tourism Promotion Authority,” said Hafez, calling for common civil visits to be organized to identify the main problems facing tourism.

In this regard, the committee will introduce proposals to activate tourism in Egypt, including introducing tourism subjects to the educational curriculum and establishing TV channels with different languages to educate people about Egypt and to attract more tourists to Egypt.

Egypt’s tourism sector is one of the country’s main foreign currency earners, it has been struggling after the political and economic turmoil following the January 25 Revolution in 2011. More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011.

Consequently, the Ministry of Tourism and the Tourism Promotion Authority are currently organizing events to attract more tourists to Egypt and boost tourism.

In October 2017, the Egyptian Tourist Authority engaged in partnership with CNN to launch a campaign for promoting tourism. The campaign is meant to spread awareness about different kinds of tourism in Egypt.

In September 2017, the Egypt tourism authority unveiled a new campaign titled “This is Egypt” (#thisisegypt), to launch a major regional campaign to drive growth in the tourism sector.

This campaign won the best tourism promotional video in the Middle East at the general assembly of the world tourism organization in China, beating 63 other contestants.

A lot of celebrities have visited Egypt to revive its tourism sector, such as Hollywood star Forest Whitaker, Argentinean football legend Lionel Messi and American actor Will Smith.