EL CAIRO – Egypt’s tourism industry has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the authorities have pinned their main hopes on Chinese tourists to revive Egypt’s tourism sector.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Zurab Pololikashvili, said Tuesday that Chinese tourists can bring Egypt’s tourism sector, which collapsed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to life.
“China is a very vital market, not only for Egypt, but also for all of Europe and other destinations,” he told Xinhua Pololikashvili, who is an officer in Egypt.
Pololikashvili arrived in Egypt on Saturday for an official visit, in which he spoke with the country’s president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and other culprits of recent primary tourism projects in Egypt in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic.
“The challenge with Chinese tourists now is that they must be quarantined for two weeks once they return home,” he said, adding that the rule had still been changed.
“I am sure that once it opens, foreign flights with China will resume and Chinese tourists will return,” Pololikashvili in Xinhua said on a stopover with Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled al-Anany to the site of the structure of the Great Egyptian Museum. at Giza.
Egypt, which has recorded 97478 COVID-19 infections and 5280 deaths, resumed flights abroad in early July after lifting a partial curfew in force since last March and reopened restaurants, cafes, theatres and cinemas, as well as hotels, museums and archaeological centres. sites, all with limited capacity.
Nearly 600 hotels were allowed to reopen nationwide because they complied with security protocols announced through the government and committed to operating at a reduced occupancy rate of 50%.
The North African country, which has noticed a sharp drop in deaths and daily infections with COVID-19, should also reopen archaeological sites, hotels and museums in the city rich in Luxor monuments to tourists since the beginning of September.
All travelers to Egypt must provide a recent PCR proving that they are free of COVID-19 as of September 1.
Earlier on Tuesday, al-Anany said Egypt had gained more than 136,000 tourists since its resorts reopened to foreign flights and tourists on July 1, after a three-month break due to the coronavirus pandemic.
China is the world’s largest market for overseas travel, and its travelers expanded from 4.5 million in 2000 to 150 million in 2018, according to a 2019 World Tourism Organization report.
Egypt is a favorable charm for thousands of Chinese tourists a year for its historic sites and sunny sandy beaches.
Official statistics from Egypt have revealed that China has the fourth largest exporter of tourists to Egypt since the beginning of 2017.
More than half a million Chinese tourists visited Egypt in 2018, according to the Chinese Embassy in Cairo.
“China is one of the world’s largest tourism exporters. Egypt is one of the attractions for thousands of Chinese,” Xinhua Ghada Shalaby, deputy minister of tourism and antiquities for tourism matters, told Xinhua.
He noted that Chinese tourists are exclusive as they advertise both beach tourism and cultural tourism, maximum of tourists who prefer to spend the maximum of their stay in beach villages.
“China exports a giant amount of tourists every year, we want to get a higher percentage of Array … I invite the Chinese to make a stopover in Egypt and I’m sure they’ll love it,” the official said.
Shalaby reaffirmed that Egypt is completely ready to welcome millions of tourists and that the authorities, in cooperation with the personal sector, are implementing all anti-COVID-19 precautionary measures to protect tourists and tourism workers.
The tourism industry, a key pillar of Egypt’s economic source of income and foreign exchange, had begun to show signs of recovery after years of political turmoil since the 2011 uprising that overthrew the defeated President Hosni Mubarak. However, he suffered a severe blow with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2019, Egypt earned $13 billion in tourism revenue.