{"id":12167,"date":"2011-11-07T14:29:02","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T10:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=12167"},"modified":"2011-11-13T12:23:58","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T08:23:58","slug":"news-analysis-egypts-tourist-industry-on-the-ropes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-business\/middle-east-economics-analysis\/news-analysis-egypts-tourist-industry-on-the-ropes\/","title":{"rendered":"News Analysis: Egypt’s Tourism ‘on the Ropes’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What’s the story?<\/strong> Egypt’s tourism industry is in serious trouble.\u00a0 Source: New York Times.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Can you give me some figures?<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, the good news is that 2010 was a record year for tourism in the country with nearly 15 million tourists taking in the multifarious delights of this splendid place.<\/p>\n

And the bad news?<\/strong> The numbers are down 42 percent through September of this year, according to the Egyptian Tourism Authority.\u00a0 That’s around $3 billion lost.<\/p>\n

I presume this year’s revolution had a lot to do with it?<\/strong>\u00a0Revolutions and that care-free, what-should-we-do-today feeling don’t tend to get along too well.<\/p>\n

But wasn’t there some talk about the ETA using the revolution to attract tourists<\/strong>?\u00a0 More than talk, they actually tested its effect in some research across key markets.<\/p>\n

And the results?<\/strong>\u00a0 \u201cPeople were happy for us about what happened, but they said, \u2019Don\u2019t talk to us about the revolution,\u201d \u2019 according to an official. “\u201cYou cannot sell Egypt through Tahrir Square.\u201d<\/p>\n

How’s the rest of the economy doing?<\/strong> At first glance not so bad. The other pillars of the economy – gas and oil sales, Suez Canal revenues and remittances from workers abroad – are either stable or growing, according to Central Bank figures.<\/p>\n

Overall, economic activity came to a standstill for months, with growth expected to tumble to under 2 per cent this year from a robust 7 per cent in 2010. Official unemployment rates rose to at least 12 per cent from 9 per cent. Foreign investment is negligible.<\/p>\n

So the government is taking immediate and rapid action on several fronts to get things going again<\/strong>?\u00a0 If by ‘rapid’ and ‘immediate’ you mean ‘sitting on their hands’ then you are correct.<\/p>\n

Egypt’s notorious for its love of bureaucracy and its red tape. Surely this has been relaxed?<\/strong>\u00a0 Quite the contrary, it appears. According to Hisham Fahmy of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt:\u00a0 \u201cThe normal red tape has got redder.”<\/p>\n

It’s enough to make a Sphinx cry<\/strong>. Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEWS ANALYSIS: It’s been a very rough year for Egypt’s tourist industry and it looks like things are set to get a whole lot worse. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4,893],"tags":[18300,1253,4222,399,795],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}