Hesham Zazou, Minister of Tourism, asserted that the ministry targets raising the tourism sector income to reach $10 billion, and 12 million tourists occupying 140 million touristic nights by the end of 2012. On the sidelines of the eighth conference of the Egyptian National Competitiveness Council (ENCC), Hesham Zazou said the strategic plan of the tourism ministry aims at attracting 30 million tourists within 2020, to achieve 300 million touristic nights, and raising the tourism income to exceed $ 25 billion. He added that the tourism sector witnessed great fall in 2011 due to the incidents and turmoil followed the revolution; mentioning that the tourists numbers went down to 9 million ones, EGP 7.5 billion total income; compared to 15 million tourists in 2010 and EGP 12 billion total income. Egypt's global tourism classification went down to 75 among 139 countries last year, and the ninth rank among Arab countries. Zazou affirmed that this curve heads rise in the coming period, in case of improving the security and political states, as the tourists numbers increased by 23.4%, 6.2 million tourists, achieving $ 5.2 billion income.
