Egypt tourism minister sees recovery despite challenges

CAIRO: Egypt's tourism minister hopes to fully revive one of the country's most vital industries by next April but persuading the world that it is safe to visit the ancient pyramids or Red Sea resorts after three years of upheaval is a daunting task.
Hisham Zaazou is mounting public relations campaigns, inviting foreign officials to visit and assess Egypt's stability for themselves and boosting security at airports and hotels.
He is fully aware that a single attack by Islamist insurgents or new street protests in a nation destabilized by political turmoil since the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 could instantly undermine what he says is progress.
Zaazou's campaign is highly vulnerable to travel warnings issued by Western states who were the source of most tourists before a slump in business hammered the economy.
"Once you don't have the perception that your security and safety is guaranteed these countries will put out a negative travel advice. And that's closing the door for the client," said Zaazou in an interview for the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit.
"I went around to the source markets and asked these governments, particularly at the ministries of foreign affairs, to send technical delegations to Egypt to check our measures in that respect and write us a report." Zaazou hopes his efforts will return annual tourism revenues — a pillar of the economy — to pre-uprising, peak levels of 2009 and 2010 of $12.5 billion, despite what he calls alarmist media coverage of Egypt.
"At the end of the winter season which is April 2015, not the end of 2015, we should record good numbers of the comeback and the full revival of the tourism industry," he said.
Once peaking at $12.5 billion a year, tourism revenues were less than half that in 2013 at $5.9 billion.
More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011. They picked up the following year to 11.5 million but shrank back to 9.5 million last year.
Tourist revenue in the first half of 2014 was $3 billion, down 25 percent from the same period a year earlier, the government said in August. Government figures had shown tourism contributed 11.3 percent of GDP and 14.4 percent of foreign currency revenues.
Egypt's tourism industry has survived big setbacks in the past.
On Nov. 17, 1997 militants descended on Queen Hatshepsut's temple near the Nile town of Luxor. In a short time they shot or hacked to death 58 tourists and four Egyptians.
The following January and February, visitor numbers were down almost 60 percent from the previous year. Yet the industry staged a remarkable comeback.
Western countries whose travel warnings make Zaazzou's job more challenging are looking at a more complex security equation in Egypt these days.
The rapid advance of Islamic State has worried governments across the region, including in Egypt.
Still, Zaazou is convinced that a greater emphasis on security and innovation can make a difference.
He said he is working closely with security authorities on ways of making the Arab world's most populous nation safer in the hope of luring back European visitors who make up about 70 percent of the market.
He has his eye on potential long-haul tourists from the United States, as well as visitors from China, stressing that the Asian powerhouse exports 98 million tourists globally each year.
"I'm going to concentrate more and more in the coming few weeks on China. There is a proposition to have a charter operation for the first time from China," said Zaazou.
The minister says aside from spending from the Defense and Interior Ministry, about $7 million has been allocated to security from his own ministry's finances over the past year.
To entice foreigners, Zaazou is coming up with new products off the once worn out tracks of the pyramids, Luxor, Aswan and Red Sea beaches.