Tourism in Egypt hit by a stalled revolution

Lurching around the Great Pyramids on a camel was part of the trip-of-a-lifetime experience that Farag Abu Ghaneima once touted dozens of times a day, but he recently sold three of his five camels to the butcher.

Tourists who flocked here by the millions annually now dribble through so sporadically that his two horse buggies sit unused many days and only three of 15 employees remain around the family stable and perfume shop. “We can barely earn enough to feed ourselves, much less the horses and camels,”said Abu Ghaneima, pointing out the articulated rib cages and jutting hip bones of animals idling around a pretty little green square in his village, a stone’s throw from the Sphinx.”

The revolution was beautiful, but nobody imagined the consequences. “More than eight months after President Hosni Mubarak was toppled, the euphoria of Egypt’s political spring has surrendered to a season of discontent.

There is widespread gloom that Egypt is again stagnating, its economy heading toward a cliff, while the caretaker government refuses or fails to act.

Tourism, a buttress of the economy upon which an estimated 15 million people depend, remains in a tailspin.
Frequent strikes over pay and worker rights further erode long-battered government services from transportation to hospitals. Mass demonstrations that have descended into sectarian riots, like the one on October 9 that ended with 27 people dead after a harsh military response, have left the public uneasy that anarchy lurks. Parliamentary elections, scheduled to start November 28 and entailing three rounds ending January 10, were meant to bring a sense of achievement and distill the uprising into a fairer, less corrupt political and economic system. But as campaigning begins in earnest this week, the proliferation of more than 55 parties and about 6,600 candidates for 498 seats in the People’s Assembly inspires mostly confusion.
“The picture has become so muddled that we don’t know where we’re going,” this is the problem,” said Rami Essam, the young heartthrob bard of the revolution, answering questions between guitar songs in Tahrir Square, where lackluster demonstrations still come together on most Fridays. “Freedom!” he sang about the unrealised demands of the revolution. “Ignored,” the crowd responded in Arabic. “Civilian rule! --- Ignored!,” “Counterrevolutionaries! Ignored!” ; Arrested on the square last March, Essam posted pictures online of the heavy gashes and bruises he said had been inflicted by soldiers who detained him. He tweaks protest anthems that targeted the Mubarak government to denounce the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. “We have not realised any of our demands, and all of our dreams are gone,” he said.
On the economic front, Egypt’s most important sources of income remain steady, with tourism the notable exception.

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. But those sources of income have accomplished little more than propping up an ailing economy.
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. The revolutionary tumult hit tourism hardest.
Nearly 15 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, a record, but numbers were off by 42 per cent through September of this year, said Amr Elezabi, the chairman of the Egyptian Tourism Authority, with about $3 billion lost. Whenever the numbers of tourists begin to edge up, they inevitably collapse again after periodic riots.

Desperate to reverse the trend, the tourism authority even test-marketed the uprising. “People were happy for us about what happened, but they said, ’Don’t talk to us about the revolution,” ’ Elezabi said.

“You cannot sell Egypt through Tahrir Square.”
Part of the blame for Egypt’s economic malaise, though, rests with the caretaker Cabinet, which reports to the ruling military council. The ministers, mindful that several businessmen who served in the Mubarak government sit in jail on corruption convictions, are reluctant to sign off on new projects.
“The normal red tape got redder,” said Hisham A. Fahmy, the chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which groups elite multinational and Egyptian companies.