Cairo - Morale in Egypt’s tourism industry is at rock bottom; a summer of bloodshed has frightened away all but the bravest foreign visitors from Cairo and the pyramids, and things are little better in the Red Sea beach resorts.
Yet if the business could survive the 1997 bloodbath at Luxor, when Islamist militants killed dozens of tourists at a pharaoh’s temple, it can probably recover from its current convulsions.
Visitors are gradually returning after the worst civil violence in Egypt’s modern history, offering hope to an industry that has been brought to its knees, depriving millions of their livelihood and the economy of badly needed dollars.
However, Egyptians know that numbers can never climb back to anywhere near their 2010 peak as long as security crackdowns, street protests and militant attacks on the government persist.
Like other countries in trouble, Egypt could try an advertising campaign to lure back the Europeans, Asians, Americans and Gulf Arabs who are now largely holidaying elsewhere. But for now it won’t bother.
“There is really no point in trying to embark on a PR campaign,” Karim Helal, an adviser to Egypt’s tourism minister, said. “If you cannot convey the feeling that it is safe, nobody will come.”
Egypt has endured almost constant upheaval since a 2011 popular uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, but things have become worse since the army’s removal of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July and the bloodshed that followed.
As international media broadcast scenes of mosques and morgues filled with bodies, governments in the main tourist markets issued warnings on travelling to Egypt.
Visitors are a rare sight in Cairo, even though October always marked the start of the peak season when a gentle breeze from the Nile eases the stifling heat. In July, only about one in six of the capital’s hotel beds were occupied, according to research firm STR Global.
Even in the Red Sea resorts, largely shielded from the violence in the big cities, occupancy rates are drastically down. In Hurghada, a destination usually popular with Russians fleeing the bitter winters, only 11 000 of 50 000 hotel rooms were occupied, provincial governor Ahmed Abdullah said.
Nobody has felt the consequences more than the many Egyptians who rely for their living on tourism, traditionally a pillar of the economy and the second-biggest forex earner.
Horse carriage driver Ramadan Iraqi has lost hope that he will soon see tourists return to the five-star Cairo hotel that once gave him work. He cuts a lonely figure late at night in Zamalek searching for a customer so he can feed his family of six. “I am an old man,” says Iraqi, 55. “What am I supposed to do?”
It has been 20 days since anyone rode in his carriage along the Nile. Iraqi can scarcely feed his horse and can no longer afford medicine to ease severe pain in his knee.
Such individual misery is reflected at a national level.
Tourism earned Egypt $9.75 billion (R96.2bn) in the 2012/13 financial year which ended in June, before the worst violence erupted. Even so, that was down from $11.6bn in 2009/10, the peak before the overthrow of Mubarak.
In July and August, tourist arrivals crashed by 45 percent, Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou said. He estimated losses since the army takeover at $1bn a month.
However, German visitors have been returning since last month, when Berlin relaxed a travel advisory that had said tourists should stay away from Egypt entirely. – Reuters