CAIRO: The number of tourists visiting Egypt in April fell 35.7 percent from a year earlier, and the number of nights they spent fell even more, the state CAPMAS statistics agency said on Sunday.
Tourists, a major source of Egypt’s foreign exchange, have been frightened away by the mass protests that toppled president Hosny Mubarak in February. The number of tourists in the first three months of 2010 plunged by 46 percent.
Only 800,000 tourists visited Egypt in April, down from 1.24 billion in April 2010, while the total number of nights they spent dropped 44.7 percent to 6.7 million.
The biggest decline was in tourists arriving from Eastern Europe, whose numbers declined 58.2 percent.
Egypt’s economy contracted by 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
