The Dahab bombings will impact most strongly on Egypt's summer tourist season, reports Rehab Saad That the October 2004 bomb attack on Taba was widely interpreted as a reaction to atrocities taking place against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories led many to predict -- correctly, it turned out -- that the impact on tourist numbers visiting Sinai would be minimal. When Sharm El-Sheikh was attacked in July 2005 the impact on tourism, particularly in south Sinai, was much stronger. And though tourist officials are saying it is too early to assess the impact of the three bombs detonated last week in Dahab, many fear the industry is at the beginning of a real crisis. "I am not happy and I don't know where it is all heading. We should respond somehow, but frankly I don't know what that response can be. The fact that these incidents are a recurring phenomenon is very disturbing," said Elhami El-Zayyat, president of Emeco Travel and ex-head of the Egyptian Tourism Federation. Emeco Travel, a market leader in conference and incentive tourism, is reporting huge cancellations in conferences scheduled in the next few months. "This is very natural," says El-Zayyat. "This kind of expensive tourism is very sensitive to any negative developments." More worrying, he says, is that operators in Italy and France have told clients who had booked trips to Egypt before the attack that they can postpone their journey for up to 12 months at no additional cost. "Of course there will be a negative impact but so far everything is normal. We are following up and monitoring occupancy rates and the reaction of tour operators. We are also monitoring aviation movement, both schedule and charter. Everything looks normal so far," says Hala El-Khatib, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Tourism. The challenge now, she believes, is to "rebuild confidence in the destination, and this involves organising familiarisation trips for travel agents and tour operators as well as foreign journalists to come and investigate the area themselves". The second challenge, says El-Khatib, concerns the rates charged: "We are trying hard to convince hotels not to decrease their rates because it will be extremely difficult to return to a higher rate once things get better." Of Egypt's 170,000 hotel rooms 56,000 are in South Sinai, and they average a 93 per cent occupancy rate. "The impact so far is not drastic," says Ahmed Abdel-Fattah, manager of the Swiss Inn Gold Hotel in Dahab. "We were completely full before the attack. After the bombings we had expected in-guest tourists to leave but this did not happen. But there have been some cancellations, especially in the German and Swiss markets. On Tuesday, a day after the attacks, a German group cancelled 11 out of the 20 rooms they had reserved. But the Russian market, which is the most important for us, is holding up and groups are still coming as scheduled." Dahab has 21 hotels and a total of and 78 tourist camps employing 5,000 workers. Yet others work in restaurants, tourist bazaars and diving centres. In addition, 44 projects are under construction, at an estimated investment of LE3 billion. According to the head of Dahab City, Major General Saleh Abdel-Raouf, Dahab enjoys average occupancy rates of 70 per cent, though the figure was much higher during the week of the bombings. It is estimated that the town has already lost LE250,000 in revenues since the attack. Pristine waters and stunning aquatic life have long made Dahab popular with divers, and more recently it has established a reputation as one of the best wind-surfing resorts. Before the Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh bombings it also attracted large numbers of Israeli tourists, though their numbers have plummeted following repeated travel warnings issued by the Israeli government. A day after the attack Danny Arditi, head of Israel's National Security Council's counter- terrorism unit, expressed satisfaction that many Israelis had heeded his unit's advice against travel to Sinai. In the Jerusalem Post he said that over the Pessah holiday -- which coincided with the Dahab bombings -- 8,000 Israelis had traveled to Sinai, less than half of last year's number. Until the 2004 Taba bombings Israel was Sinai's top market. In the summer of 2004 an estimated 300,000 Israeli tourists holidayed in Sinai. While neither the US nor European countries have issued advice against traveling to Egypt, they have asked their citizens to exercise caution, and Americans have been requested to "postpone travel to south Sinai because of the considerable disruptions in the area". While the British Foreign Office has drawn travellers' attention to the bombings in Dahab it has not changed the level of its advice. While British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that the travel advice needs to inform people of the threat from terrorism, "at the same time we must make sure we do not do the terrorists' work for them by causing too much of the very disruption which the terrorists want... The government and the people of Egypt stood firmly with us when terrorists attacked in London last year. We now stand equally in solidarity with Egypt." Travel agents and hoteliers fear the bombings will have a major impact on future bookings. "The winter season is over. The problem is that the Spanish and Italians who tend to visit Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh in the summer season should be making their bookings now for July and August. The chances are, though, they will opt for other destinations," says Mounir Wissa, head of Escapade Travel. "Sharm El-Sheikh was badly affected after it was attacked and it was only this April that tourists had started to return in normal numbers." Wissa believes that tourist package rates for Egypt will inevitably drop following the bombings. "From now on we will have to accustom ourselves to the fact that Egypt is becoming a cheap destination." Last year 8.6 million tourists visited Egypt, spending a total of $6.4 billion.
