Egypt worried over declining tourism after Russian plane crash

An official with Egypt’s Tourism Ministry has expressed concern over the recent outflow of tourists from the country following the crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai Peninsula, and its potential economic impacts.

The concern was raised Friday by an advisor to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, Mohamed Yousef, who said that if European tourists do not return to Egypt, the country’s economy will be seriously damaged since the tourist industry generates over 11 percent of the Egyptian Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Egyptian daily al-Ahram reported.

“Russian tourists are ranked first with 3 million tourists per year. British – 1 million,” Yousef said, adding, “Their leaving is a severe blow for the industry. The loss will be 70 percent of the tourist influx.”

The ministry has predicted that, in such a scenario, the Egyptian GDP would sink by 11.3 percent while its revenues in foreign currencies would be slashed by 14 percent.

Moscow announced plans to suspend flights to and from Egypt until the cause of the plane crash over Sinai, which killed 224 people last week, is established amid growing suspicions that it was caused by some sort of explosion on the plane.

“As long as we haven’t established the causes of the incident, I consider it appropriate to suspend the flights of Russian aircraft to Egypt. This primarily applies to the tourist flow,” said Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Aleksandr Bortnikov on Friday following a meeting of the Russian Anti-Terror Committee.

He said Egypt has provided Russian investigators with access to all fragments of the crashed plane as well as the baggage, pointing to the need for “absolute objectivity” and “confirmed data” to establish what exactly caused the disaster.

Moscow’s call to suspend flights to Egypt followed similar decisions by Britain, the Netherlands, Ukraine and some other states.

The Egyptian tourist business has already significantly declined since 2011, when a nationwide uprising led to the ouster of its long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak. According to press reports, Egyptian resorts until then had hosted up to 15 million tourists per year, as opposed to only 9.9 million visitors recorded in 2014.

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