Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Belgium and Switzerland issued travel warnings against travel to Sinai, including the popular tourist destination of Sharm El-Sheikh. The warnings came following a bomb attack on a tourist bus in the Egyptian resort of Taba that killed three South Koreans and an Egyptian on February 17, marking the first attack on tourists since the 25 January Revolution in 2011. After the incident, Germany, the second-largest market for tourism in Egypt after Russia, recommended that its citizens refrain from travelling to beach resorts in Egypt and it has been pulling out its nationals from Sharm El-Sheikh. The German branch of Tui Travel, Europe's largest tour operator, and other companies started to send home hundreds of German tourists after the German government changed its travel advice on the region. However, the British foreign office has not recommended evacuating British visitors from Sharm El-Sheikh. Minister of Tourism, Hisham Zaazou, announced on Sunday that the door was open for security delegations from other countries to assess the safety of tourist areas across the country in an effort to convince the world that Egypt was safe for visitors in the wake of the recent Taba bombing. Elhami Al-Zayat, head of the Egyptian Tourism Federation, said that a British delegation had visited Egypt to evaluate the security situation and had found no need to evacuate British tourists. In the short-term, Al-Zayat said that the recent travel warnings would not negatively impact tourism as British and Russian tourists had not left Sinai and the number of German tourists who had been pulled out was not large at around 240 tourists. “However, we are afraid of the long-term impacts should these travel bans continue,” Al-Zayat told Al-Ahram Weekly. Hotel occupancy rates in Sharm El-Sheikh have not been able to escape the negative effect of such alerts, with rates declining to 48 per cent, down from 55 per cent a week earlier and 20 per cent of reservations in Sharm El-Sheikh had been cancelled. While Egypt's tourism industry has been hard-hit by the political turmoil of the past few years, the Sinai beach resorts have still been able to attract significant tourist traffic. Of the 9.5 million tourists that visited Egypt last year, nearly three-quarters vacationed in Sinai.
