Egypt’s minister for tourism has pledged to ramp up marketing efforts in Australia as he revealed it was one of the few markets to post a decline in 2012.
Hisham Zaazou told Travel Today that poor air connectivity and negative images in the media were behind the 9% decline to 33,000 visitors.
However, overall visitation for the year rose 17.4% to 11.5 million, with tourism receipts climbing 15% to US$20 billion.
The numbers are an improvement on 2011, when the revolution saw visitation fall by one third amounting to losses in the order of US$3 billion.
“In 2012, we started gathering momentum,” he said. “Images coming from Tahrir Square are not helping, but in spite of that, people are still coming. If it was really instable, people wouldn’t come.”
Although an Australian roadshow is unlikely to take place this year, Zaazou confirmed the ministry will look at improving its local representation, with the closest office currently located in Japan.
“We need a solution for Australia,” he said. “We need to spend more money there.”
Zaazou was also optimistic the new alliance between Qantas and Emirates would stimulate air traffic from Australia which has suffered since Egypt Air withdrew its direct Sydney service when Emirates entered the market.
Meanwhile, he confirmed that no hotels have closed as a result of the instability, with occupancies in all regions apart from Cairo holding up.
Its cruise sector is also seeing good growth, with 600,000 passengers passing through its sea ports in 2012, up from 490,000 the previous year.
