Friday March 29th, 2024
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Tourism Reaches Scary Levels as 51.7 Per Cent Drop Noticed From Last May

CAPMAS announced that the tourism situation in Egypt is getting worse – a lot worse – as Egypt's tourism has decreased by over 50 per cent from last May.

Staff Writer

Tourism Reaches Scary Levels as 51.7 Per Cent Drop Noticed From Last May

It’s no surprise that tourism is low in Egypt. However, what's alarming is the dire fact that tourists visiting in the month of May dropped a whopping 51.7 per cent from last year.

According to Central Agency for Public Mobilsation and Statistics (CAPMAS), it was announced that only 431,800 tourists visited this past May versus the 894,000 who visited in May of 2015. The statistics agency believes that the 61.3 per cent decrease in Russian tourists was due to Russian flights being banned following the plane crash that occurred in Sinai last October.

Regardless, tourism has been steadily decreasing since the January 25th uprising of 2011 and hasn’t been given a chance to recover as terrible public relation headlines and threats of terrorism continue to plague Egypt regularly. That is why it isn't just Russians avoiding Egypt; there is a 12.9 per cent decrease of tourists from the UK, a 10 per cent decrease from Germany, and a 4.2 per cent decrease of those from Italy since last May.

The shortage in tourist numbers has wreaked havoc on Egypt’s foreign currency reserves, leading the country to consider drastic policy changes to protect what foreign currency it still has.