The Egyptian Travel Agents Association (ETAA) restored $4.750m from foreign companies that stopped paying their dues to the Egyptian companies in the last year.
According to a financial statement by the association, the ETAA concluded settlement agreements with a number of foreign companies to pay the dues of Egyptian companies. As a result, it lifted these companies from the black list.
“The Egyptian Travel Agents Association prohibits its members to deal with foreign companies that have stopped paying the dues of any member company of the association in order to guarantee that the latter will obtain their due amounts,” the statement read.
The companies with which settlements were concluded included Japanese, Greek, Russian, and Ukrainian companies.
According to the official website of the ETAA, the number of companies that are still prohibited to be dealt with due to not paying the dues reached 79, most of which are from the European market.
Member of the ETAA Moody El-Shaer said that they paid significant efforts last year to settle the disputes between the Egyptian and foreign companies and restore the money for the former, which guarantees the resumption of business with these companies. This helps in restoring tourism coming from the countries in which these companies operate.
El-Shaer believes that the Egyptian market is prominent for the majority of foreign companies, given variety of the country’s tourism resources, such as recreational tourism on beaches, safari tourism in the desert, or visiting archaeological areas in Luxor and Aswan, in addition to the mild weather during the winter.
El-Shaer expects the number of tourists coming from eastern Europe to Egypt to increase, especially during the winter, given the low temperature in these countries compared to Egypt. He added that the recent bombings in Turkey will serve the interest of the tourism movement coming to Egypt, especially if Russian tourism trips to Egypt are resumed.
Workers in the tourism sector hope that Russian trips to Egypt are resumed this January, after they were suspended since November 2015 in the aftermath of the crash of a Russian Metrojet aeroplane in Sinai.
