Egypt Tourism Revenue Falls by 24.7% in H1

Egypt’s tourism revenue tumbled by 24.7 percent to around $3 billion in the first half of 2014, the Ministry of Tourism said in a statement.

Tourism has been hammered since the popular uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It suffered another blow in February when a coach carrying Korean tourists was bombed by Islamist extremists.

The bus carrying Korean tourists was bombed near Taba in southern Sinai, not far from an Israel border crossing often used by vacationers, killing two South Koreans and one Egyptian in February.

The ministry said that the number of tourists to visit Egypt in the first half of 2014 reached 4.5 million tourists, dropping by around 25 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Tourism revenues had dropped by 41 percent in 2013 to $5.9 billion and the number of tourists during that year reached 9.5 million.

Source: Reuters