CAIRO: Egypt's tourism industry was down 80 percent during the last period, the country Tourism Minister Munir Fakhry Abdel Nour said in an interview with al-Dostour newspaper. He said that Jordanians made up the largest number of visitors to the country in the last quarter, with the Red Sea becoming a popular destination for the country's travelers. Abdel Nour said the problem of decreasing Arab tourists could “only be resolved with joint Arab cooperation.” In areas such as Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, tourism has made a huge recovery. Moustafa al-Fayomee, a Hurghada resident and tour guide told Bikyamasr.com he believes tourism in the aforementioned areas are currently booming. “The nightclubs and bars are crowded,” he said. “Red Sea tourism is still very popular, but not many people want to stay in Cairo, they prefer to do small excursions there. Luxor and Aswan are still quite empty according to my friends in the industry there.” Official figures have shown that the decline in tourism is slowly receding. During the first quarter of the year, tourism fell by 45.7 percent compared to the previous year. In the second quarter that decrease was 35.4 percent and the figures for July have shown a decrease of 28 percent. The tourism industry is the main source of income for roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian workforce. While the leisure tourism industry in prominent party areas such as Hurghada are making a steady recovery, places like Aswan and Cairo have yet to see the conventional tourist return en masse. “Traditionally the volume of tourism is split around 80 percent on the Red Sea coast and 20 percent in the Nile valley for the archaeology there,” Abdel Nour said. “But in this period, tourists have avoided the valley because the political activity is centred in the capital and in the large cities, so people have preferred to head to the beaches, which are relatively far away,” he added. Egypt has launched an enormous promotional campaign to revitalize all sectors of tourism in the country. According to Abdel Nour, Egypt “is totally secure” and “does not present any danger to visitors.” Abdel Nour has also said he wishes to promote Egypt to the emerging markets of China, Brazil, India and Argentina. “We want to get off the beaten track. We must look at new economic forces, which have become important markets,” he said. The minister has also revealed their plan to expand on the types of tourism that are already present, and tapping in to markets such as ecological tourism and therapy tourism, both fairly recent types of tourism which have greatly expanded over the last decade. Eco-tourism is a growing market which focuses on maintaining a sustainable form of tourism, to minimise the carbon footprint in an area and to foster a greater respect and understanding for the local culture and environment. Eco-tourism itself is one of the fastest growing forms of tourism worldwide, and many environmentalists have been in favor of promoting a sustainable form of tourism. “When people arrive en masse anywhere they naturally cause damage to the environment,” Marie-Lou Meslin, a student who has lived in Indonesia most of her life, told Bikyamasr.com, “in Bali specifically, the tourism has been so emphasized that it has had a very negative impact on the environment as well as the culture. The ramifications for it are enormous.” Referring to tourism in general, Meslin spoke of the dramatic change she has seen in the last two decades in the ‘paradise' island of Bali as a general view of mass tourism. “Without a sustainable system in place which limits the passive impact tourists have, many natural environments which were once considered pristine, or heritage sites themselves which slowly deteriorate over time, will be spoiled at an increased rate,” she added. There were more than 10 million tourists that had visited Egypt in 2008. With Egypt boasting the oldest structures in existence, the pyramids, mitigating the damage caused by tourists would in the long run allow them to maintain such a tourist attraction in better form. ** Luiz Sanchez contributed to this report in Hurghada. BM
