The tourism Minister, Rania Al-Mashat, stated that that the tourism industry contributed 20% to Egypt’s GDP this year.
Al-Mashat said during the Al-Ahram third annual economic conference that the sector is connected to about 70 subsidiary industries, which reflects the importance of this sector.
Notably, AL-Mashat previously said that the number of tourists visiting Egypt jumped by 30 % during the first quarter of 2018 compared to last year, asserting that that tourism currently represents 15% of the total income sources of the national economy.
During the conference, Al-Mashat pointed out that the global tourism sector has been in recovery since the end of 2016, especially with the high demand by people to visit new areas, due to their recent great enthusiasm to explore new places.
She confirmed that the political leadership is interested in removing all the challenges facing the tourism sector.
By asking the former head of Egypt’s Federation of Tourism Chambers, Elhamy al-Zayat, about the obstacles that still face the tourism sector in Egypt, and how to face them, he stated that in 2010 the tourism sector was exponentially growing, then after the 2011 revolution the sector suffered to a great extent then it suffered most in 2016, especially when a Russian passenger plane crashed in Sinai in late October 2015, where all its onboard passengers were killed.
He explained that in order to restore the tourist numbers to pre-2010, the government has to launch a creative marketing campaign to promote tourism in Egypt.
He mentioned that Egypt has already developed its airports, hotels, tourist services, safety measures compared to the period after the revolution, affirming that Egypt’s tourism sector needs more efforts, in order to attract new tourist nationalities. He indicated that the only shortcoming and challenge that Egypt presently faces is the failure to promote tourism in a creative, unique manner.
