Tourism in Egypt: Arab spring break

Much of the Nile cruise fleet lies idle. Trinket-sellers and would-be guides at the Giza pyramids are so hungry for custom that they often mob or simply jump aboard approaching taxis. And though the damage has been patchy, with beach resorts still thriving even as visitors shun the ancient monuments, lingering uncertainty over the future means it may be years before Egypt regains its place in the sun.

In 2010, the last year before Egypt’s revolution, a record 14m tourists arrived. The industry was 13% of GDP and directly or indirectly employed one in seven workers. Arrivals plummeted to 9.5m in 2011, and have yet to recover (see chart). Tourism Economics, a consultancy, predicts that 11.4m tourists will come in 2013.

Yet those numbers disguise the sharpest pain. The Egyptian Tourism Federation estimates that hotel occupancy rates are barely 15% in Cairo and below 5% in Luxor, the site of the Valley of the Kings, where 19 people died in a hot-air balloon explosion in February. In January armed looters infiltrated a protest in central Cairo and stormed into the InterContinental Semiramis, one of the Egyptian capital’s swankier hotels. Chefs, waiters and honest protesters fought them off with saucepans and chairs, but the hotel had to close for weeks.

Some parts of the country are coping better than others. The Red Sea resort of Hurghada still draws hordes of sun-seeking Russians. “It is the cheapest and closest destination,” explains Maxim Stepanov, who regularly flies the four and half hours from Moscow. He also likes the fact that Russians don’t need visas here and that hotel staff often speak Russian, a language used even for Hurghada’s street signs.