CAIRO - The story began some years ago when Mohamed el-Naggar, whose hobby is taking photographs of touristic places in Egypt, started posting these photos on his personal Facebook account. The feedback from his friends was the same: "Wow, wonderful photos, where are these places? We want to go." Thus the idea came to his mind last year to create a page on this social networking utility; he named it in Arabic 'Campaign for Egyptian Tourism'. Today, this page has more than 9,300 members, while Mohamed and his friend Hossam recently created another page in English, ‘ETC' (Egyptian Tourism Campaigns), which already has 5,500 members. "In the wake of the 2011 Revolution, we have taken responsibility as ordinary members of the public for boosting the tourism sector by organising trips inside Egypt for members of the two pages. “Many foreigners and Arabs have joined us on the past 40 trips we have made so far to places as far apart as the North Coast and Upper Egypt," Mohamed, 27, told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. The tourism industry, one of the country's biggest sources of foreign currency in this highly populated country of 90 million, suffered in the aftermath of the violent uprising which erupted in January 2011, leading to the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak. The protests continue in the country. The number of visitors in 2011 dropped to 10.2 million, down 32 per cent from 2010, while tourism revenue fell from $12.5 billion in 2010 to $9 billion in 2011. But tourism has started recovering. In November 2012, the country welcomed 1.1 million tourists, according to the State-run Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). Egyptian Minister of Tourism Hisham Zaazou said last month that around 10.5 million tourists visited the country in the first 11 months of 2012, a 17 per cent increase on the same period in the previous year. The reader might think that Mohamed is somehow connected with tourism or the antiquities sector, but in fact he is an assistant lecturer works at Al-Azhar University. He and many other Egyptians have not lost hope for a better future, as they dream that post-revolution Egypt will be better. Mohamed sees that the tourism sector needs a push from volunteers, not just depending on the Government and State-run agencies. "I find interacting with ordinary people is easier than with officials," he said. "Many local channels have interviewed Hossam and myself about our campaign, which is mainly based on volunteering, but no official has ever called us after these programmes to offer us help or support," he explained. Their latest trip was to the historical Moezz Street in Fatimid Cairo, which has the greatest concentration of medieval architectural treasures in the Islamic world. About 350 people from all walks of life – students, employees, VIPs, foreigners, old people, youngsters and children – took part in the trip. They were the biggest-ever group to visit this street, much to the astonishment of the tour guides there. Whenever they visit a place, they enter it in small groups, in order to make things easier for the tour guides, who explain the history of the place to them. Then they have lunch together and take group photos. When they organise a trip to touristic places outside Cairo, they book the hotel and transportation then announce the fee to their members on the Facebook page. Once enough members sign up for the trip, off they go. "The young men on these trips always protect the women. We all co-operate with each other. We really enjoy these trips, as the comments on the Facebook page show," Mohamed added proudly.
