Monitoring Desk
CAIRO: Egypt’s tourism trade largely depends on visitors from Russia, Cairo’s envoy to Moscow has said.
Addressing the representatives of major Russian tourism companies, ambassador Nazih Al-Najari highlighted efforts to further increase traveler numbers. The forum was organized by the Egyptian Embassy in Russia. Chief Executive officer of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board, Amr El-Kady joined the event via video call. Moscow-based representatives of the national flag carrier EgyptAir were also in attendance. The historical and cultural sites of the north African country were among popular attractions for Russian visitors but the tourism chiefs hope to promote other destinations too in the north African country, Arab News reported.
In October this year, Russian airline Aeroflot resumed its services from Moscow to the cities of Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh, after having suspended direct flights to the north African country on March 8 in 2002 due to what it described as “unfavorable conditions” due to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Egypt striving to return visitor numbers to pre-coronavirus levels
Ahmed Issa, Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities said the north African country had 2022 witnessed a 30 percent increase in visitors. He said that Egypt’s government was working with the private sector to get tourist numbers back to pre-coronavirus pandemic levels and hit a tourism revenues target of $30 billion by 2025. It is to mention here that around 125,000 Russian tourists visited the north African country during the first two weeks of the outgoing year 2022 and more than 700,000 traveled to the north African country in 2021.
The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics’ data shows the overall number of tourists visiting Egypt increased by 85.4 percent to 4.9 million in the first half of 2022, compared to 2.6 million over the same period the previous year. The number of tourists from across the world reached 8 million in 2021, up from 3.7 million in 2020, representing a 117.5 percent rise.
