Egypt sees 100% rise in Italian tourist bookings in summer: source

CAIRO – 5 May 2018: Egypt is seeing a 100 percent rise in bookings by Italian holidaymakers during the summer season, compared to the same period last year, according to Italian tour operators, an official source at Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism said on Saturday.

He said that the months of January and February of this year saw a 75 percent increase year-on-year in the number of Italian tourists visiting Egypt.

he Italian daily newspaper La Stampa said in a report on Friday that Italian tourism to Egypt doubled during the first months of 2018, with Italian tourists increasing by a whopping 94 percent.

The newspaper said that the number of Italian tourists who visited Egypt in January 2018 stood at 15,707, compared to 12,471 in January 2017, increasing by 25.9 percent.

In February, the number increased by 76.2 percent year-on-year, standing at 19,241.

Tourism in Egypt has been picking up recently, with Egypt’s tourism revenues jumping 211.8 per cent year-on-year to $5.3 billion in the first nine months of 2017, compared to $1.7 billion the year before.

The number of tourists who visited Egypt in that time jumped 55.3 per cent to 5.9 million, with European visitors reaching 3.2 million, an 85 percent increase from the previous year.

Tourism is expected to receive a boost during 2018 with the return of Russian flights to Cairo, which was resumed on April 12 after more than two years of halting flights to Egypt on the back of the downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai in late 2015.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s main foreign currency earners, but it has suffered several blows since the 25 January Revolution of 2011.

Flotation of the Egyptian pound in November 2016 has benefited tourism as Egypt has now become a cheaper destination for many tourists around the world.

Despite the pickup in tourism, the numbers are still below the peak level of 2010 when 14 million tourists visited the country, generating $12.5 billion in revenues.