Twenty Marsa Alam hotels have closed their doors in the last three months due to the decrease of travel movement to the area, according to Adel Rady, Chairman of the Tourism Investors Association.
Rady said the percentage of tourism occupancies in the zone this week is between 40%-50%, but differs from one hotel to another, depending on each hotel’s marketing power.
Rady believes that the zone does not have many Egyptians visiting during vacations and holidays, especially in light of the expensive plane ticket prices, which exceed EGP 1,500 per person. These prices stand in the way of the Egyptian who wants to visit the zone.
He expects that occupancies over this summer will not exceed 60%, especially after the latest terrorist attacks in Egypt, such as the bombing of the Italian Consulate. He added that terrorist attacks will exacerbate the sector’s crisis in winter.
He added that Marsa Alam includes approximately 15,000 hotel rooms, with investments that exceed EGP 10bn.
Chairman of the Egyptian Travel Agents Association’s in South Valley (ETAA), Tharwat El-Agamy, said that travel movement has not only impacted Marsa Alam, but Luxor and Aswan as well. He added that the zone’s occupancies do not exceed 15%.
El-Agamy believes that floating hotels were the most impacted by this decline. Almost 280 floating hotels stopped working over the past four years.
He hopes that reservations will increase over the coming winter, if “marketing for Luxor and Aswan is separated from Cairo, which suffered from terrorism attacks lately”.
The number of floating hotel rooms in Luxor and Aswan is 17,000, while the number of inland hotel rooms is 4,000.
