Travco Group will increase the prices of hotel rooms occupancy by 15% this year, as inbound tourism increased at the end of 2019, a senior official, who preferred not to be identified, said. The official added that Travco aims to bring the average occupancy of its hotels to 85% within the current year, compared to its average occupancy of 73% during previous year. Travco owns Jaz Hotels Group, which manages and owns 54 hotels. The company will construct four hotels during the first and second quarters, with a capacity of 1,400 rooms in different areas of Egypt, bringing the company's total capacity to 13,400 rooms disbursed between 58 hotels. “Two hotels will be opened in Safaga, one in Hurghada, and one in Marsa Alam with a total capacity of 1,400 rooms,” he said. He noted that the company funded the four hotels with 40% self-financing and 60% bank financing. The hotel operating capacity in Egypt is about 205,000 rooms all throughout Egypt, and the majority of them are located in the Red Sea and South Sinai governorates. He noted that the company will focus on traditional markets of tourism exports like Britain and Italy, as well as more recent markets coming from eastern and southern Asia -which has seen significant growth within the past two years. This past cycle, tourism to Egypt increased to 13.6 million tourists, compared to 11.3 million in the year prior. This has been greatly supported by growing inflows of German, Arab Gulf, and eastern European tourists. The Central Bank of Egypt has stated that tourism revenues for Egypt increased to $12.57bn during the last fiscal year, experiencing a growth of 28%.
