Egypt’s tourism industry is losing $1 billion a month as tourists avoid the country in the wake of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak as president.
“The effects have been drastic,” Omayma el-Husseini, spokeswoman of the Egyptian Tourism Ministry, said in a telephone interview.
Egypt forecast 16 million tourists for 2011 before the uprising, which began on Jan 25. But in just a few days, a million tourists fled the country, abandoning the hotels and restaurants in Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and the Red Sea resorts of Hurghada and Sharm el Sheik.
Egypt received 14.5 million tourists in 2010, making tourism the second largest revenue source, after expatriate remittances, according to government figures.
Some European countries have eased their travel warnings to Egypt after Mr. Mubarak decided to step down on Feb. 11, but the movement is still well below normal.
“We are relying only on charter flights coming from Europe that take tourists to the Red Sea resorts but it is much less than before,” said Ms. Husseini, the Tourism Ministry spokeswoman.
Hotels, restaurants, shops and tourist guides are complaining of a huge drop in income.
In Luxor, which has some of the most beautiful Pharaonic temples and monuments and warm winter weather, hotel occupancy dropped to 4 percent by Feb. 5 from 61 percent in mid-January, said Ahmed al-Nahas, who heads the Egyptian Tourism Chamber of Commerce.
In Sharm el Sheik, the hotel occupancy rate is 8 percent, down from 70 percent in mid-January, Mr. Nahas said.
The industry was first buffeted by the Egyptian prosecutor general’s investigations involving Zuhair Garana, a former tourism minister who has been accused of using his authority to enrich his own tourism company.
“This has been a real ruin for us,” said Ashraf Fekri Youssef, executive manager of Garana Tourism, which caters for tourists on the Red Sea.
Mr. Youssef said he had to accept an immediate 50 percent cut in his salary after tourists disappeared from the resort’s beaches.
“We also used to live on other commissions,” he said. “That’s all gone now as well.”
In Kirdasa, a small town where tourists used to go shopping after finishing their tours of the Great Pyramids of Giza, stores selling embroidery and handmade fabrics were closed.
“There is no business whatsoever right now,” said Moustapha Eissa, who converted a room in his house into a walk-in store for traditional garments, to capitalize on the many tourists that swarmed to the area. “We used to have lots of Western tourists and Arab tourists. Business was good but everything was brought to a standstill.”
On Monday, several Egyptian government-run newspapers reported that Hussein Massod, chief executive of Egyptair, had grounded 40 percent of its fleet in response to the slump in air traffic. Egyptair later denied the report, saying that the drop in traffic reflected the decision of seven international carriers to suspend their flights to Egypt. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Egyptair was offering 25 of its latest planes for lease, complete with crew, and the company said it had lost about 80 percent of its projected revenue this year.
Ms. Husseini said the Tourism Ministry was completing a plan to promote Egypt once again, aiming to revive the aviation and tourism industries, especially through trade shows in the United States and Europe.
Hundreds of Egyptian tourist guides rallied in the Pyramids of Giza area calling for the “return of tourists” and for measures to make tourists feel safe again. They said they were thinking of innovative ways to lure tourists back, including day trips to Tahrir Square, made internationally famous by around-the-clock media coverage of the protests that overthrew the Mubarak regime.