The ministries of tourism and civil aviation, together with other tourism-related organisations, have launched a campaign aiming at reviving tourism by offering discounted travel packages to Egyptian nationals. According to the initiative, packages for three nights at four- and five-star hotels at the Red Sea resorts of Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada are available at prices that start at LE1,000 for each individual, including a return ticket. The campaign, called Baladna Awla Beena (To Egypt we come first), was supposed to last for two weeks, but it has been extended for another week until 21 September due to what Adla Ragab, a minister of tourism advisor, called unprecedentedly high demand. Ragab said that while the initial plan was to offer 3,000 air tickets through the package, the ministry had since decided to increase the number by another 1,000 tickets to cover the increased demand. The ministry is subsidising the air tickets by LE300, which results in reducing the cost by almost 40 per cent, according to Ragab. While Ragab declined to give the number of hotels included in the offer, she said that every day more hotels were being encouraged to join the campaign, adding that there was also a plan to offer similar packages during the upcoming holidays. While the package so far includes only Al-Karnak, the travel company affiliated to the national carrier EgyptAir, other travel companies are following suit by tailoring cheap offers in the Red Sea resorts to make use of the demand triggered by the initiative. Other efforts to support the sector include the National Bank of Egypt's (NBE) decision earlier this week to defer LE5 billion of debt payment instalments for clients operating in Egypt's tourism sector. The decision was based on a Central Bank proposal to postpone debt repayments for the country's tourist sector until March 2014. The sector, already hit hard by two-and-a-half years of political unrest and a lack of security, received a further blow last month when many countries that are considered to be main markets for tourists to Egypt issued travel warnings to their citizens against travelling to the country. This is expected to end the short-lived revival in the sector that was seen in the first half of 2013. Egypt received around 5.7 million tourists in the first six months of 2013, generating some $4.4 billion in revenues, a 9.6 per cent rise compared to the same period in 2012. Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmi asked Egyptian ambassadors to make plans to encourage residents of foreign countries to visit Egypt and to try to convince foreign governments to lift the restrictions they are imposing on tourism to Egypt. The minister of tourism, Hisham Zazou, held a meeting with the Russian ambassador on Monday, asking for the Russian government's warnings against travelling to Egypt to be reconsidered, especially since tourist areas in Egypt were safe. Several governments issued warnings against travel to Egypt last month following violent clashes in Cairo and some other governorates between security forces and protesters, with Germany and Russia extending their travel warnings for the first time to the Red Sea resorts of Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada. German travel agents decided to postpone their tours to Egypt's Red Sea resorts to the end of this month instead of resuming them next week. The Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority hosted a group of Italian media personnel and travel agents last weekend at the Red Sea resorts in an effort to convince the Italians that the Red Sea was a secure zone and to urge the Italian government to cancel its warning against travel to Red Sea attractions like Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada. According to the Ministry of Tourism's figures, about 700,000 Italians visited Egypt last year, with 80 per cent of these vacationing in the Red Sea resorts, out of a total of 11.5 million tourists. However, according to Nagui Erian, deputy head of the Chamber of Hotel Facilities at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, last week's failed attempt to assassinate the minister of the interior might affect Egypt's efforts to reassure potential tourists on the improved security situation in the country, despite the fact that the incident was in Cairo and far from any tourist area. “Tourism is a very sensitive industry and we should never forget that,” he pointed out. As a result of the travel warnings and unrest, Erian said that hotel occupancy rates in the Red Sea resorts had fallen by between 25 to 30 per cent, while the percentage of occupied rooms had fallen to less than five per cent in Luxor and Aswan over the last couple of months. Zazou said during last week's conference that his ministry was approaching countries such as Brazil, Japan, China, Portugal and several African countries in a bid to increase tourist flows during the coming period, especially since the winter season, normally the high season for tourism in Egypt, begins next month. “I expect that the travel warnings will be gradually cancelled over the next few weeks and tourists will start to flow normally again,” Zazou said.
