Improved Security helped increase tourist arrivals: Report

CAIRO – 14 September 2017: The improvement in security measures in Egypt’s major tourist resorts and international airports has helped recover tourist arrivals to the country, London-based think-tank Capital Economics said in a research note Wednesday.

The security stability has urged travel advice on Egypt to be revised, Capital Economics’ Jason Tuvey said, mentioning statements of Russian Transport Minister, Maxim Sokolov, in September that flights from Russia to Egypt could resume within the next month.

Tuvey also attributed the recovery to the sharp decline in the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound as travel packages have become cheaper in foreign currency terms.
Tourist arrival levels have been negatively affected since the January 2011 revolution, which caused political and economic instability. Tourism was further hit when a Russian airliner crashed over Sinai in 2015, killing all 224 passengers on board.

“A more realistic assumption is that annual tourist arrivals will return to their levels prior to the Russian plane bombing over the next two years – that would still leave tourist arrivals some 30% below their pre-Arab Spring peak,” Tuvey said.

Saying that the worst of the downturn in Egypt’s tourism sector appears to have passed, Tuvey predicted that the sector’s rebound would continue over the coming years.

Egyptian tourism revenues roughly tripled in the fourth quarter (Q4) of fiscal year (FY) 2016/2017, which ended in June 30, recording $1.5 billion, compared to $510 million in the same period last year.

These figures are justifiable as tourist flows to Egypt increased from January until June 2017 by 3.5 million tourists, compared to 2.3 million tourists during the same period in 2016, according to the Ministry of Tourism statistics.

In the first nine months of FY 2016/2017, tourism revenues jumped 128.3 percent to record $1.3 billion, achieving an additional $550.5 million, compared to the previous year, the CBE said in a previous report.