By Hend Kortam, Aswat Masriya Egypt’s tourism minister said Saturday he expects the number of tourists to drop by 13 percent in 2015/2016, compared to the year before, reaching 9 million tourists. Given the tourism crisis Egypt is facing, Minister Hisham Zaazou said in a Cabinet statement that he expects revenues to fall by 15 percent compared to last year, dropping to $6.2 billion. Egyptian tourism was slowly inching towards recovery when, on Oct. 31, a charter flight operated by Russian airline Metrojet broke up midair 23 minutes after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport as it headed to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 passengers and crew on board. Egypt’s most active militant group in North Sinai, Sinai Province, an affiliate of ISIS, claimed responsibility for downing the plane twice. Last week, the Kremlin announced the completion of its own investigation into the crash, claiming that it was an act of terrorism that brought the plane down as it found traces of “foreign-made explosives.” Egypt fears that the ramifications of this incident will be bad news for its struggling tourism sector, a vital source of much-needed hard currency. The incident put Egyptian airport security under scrutiny in…
Egypt’s Tourism in Crisis: Number of Tourists to Drop by 13 Percent
November 22, 2015
