Egypt seeks bigger share of India's tourist pie

Vegetarian food, attractive holiday packages and, above all, advertising the country through Bollywood and regional cinema are all part of an elaborate game plan chalked out by Egypt's tourism ministry, recovering from declining footfalls due to political unrest of the last few years, to woo the globe-trotting Indian traveller to the Land of Pyramids.

Ismail Hamid, the Egyptian Tourism Counsellor to India, said the country was reviving from the slowdown in tourist arrivals following the 2011 revolution that saw the toppling of two governments in three years.

According to Hamid, tourist footfalls fell from 14.7 million in 2010 to around 10 million in 2014 - a drop of about 32 percent - while Indian footfalls declined by a whopping 48 percent in the same period, largely due to perceptions that Egypt has become unsafe due to chronic political violence brought about by the Arab Spring and its chaotic aftermath with hundreds of deaths and then the transition to a military-led government after a failed experiment with democratic rule.