15% increase in targeted tourist arrivals to Egypt in 2017

CAIRO - 13 April 2017: The number of tourists coming to Egypt during the first quarter of 2017 was 15 percent higher than the targeted figures, Tourism Minister Mohamed Yehia Rashed said Thursday.

“If the increasing rate continues, the targeted number will be realized by the end of 2017,” Rashed added in response to Parliament members' inquiries about the measure taken so far to boost the tourism sector.

There have not been any official figures regarding tourists targeted during 2017. However, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) reported in March that the number of tourists who arrived in February increased by 55.6 percent compared to the same month a year earlier.

“The increasing figures announced by CAPMAS in February do not reflect a real improvement in the sector, the annual numbers are more logical,” member of the Tourism Companies Division at Cairo Chamber of Commerce Amary Abd al-Azeem told Egypt Today.

Inbound tourism dropped to 5.3 million tourists in 2015, compared to 9.3 million tourists in 2016, after Russia and Britain had stopped their flights in the aftermath of the Russian Jet airliner dramatic crash in October 2015. Yet, the number is still well below the peak of 14.5 million tourists in 2010.

Tourism revenues fell to $3.4 billion in 2016, 44.3 percent down from the previous year, the governor of Central Bank of Egypt’s Tarek Amer told Reuters in January.

Rashed announced early this year that 2017 will be a year of "massive recovery" in the Egyptian tourism sector, once foreign airlines from Egypt’s top markets, such as Russia, UK, and Germany resume their flights to the country.