Tour operators weigh returning to Egypt

With the elections in Egypt successfully and peacefully completed, tour operators are testing the waters in consideration of whether to return to the country. Some are cautiously watching as things develop. Some never stopped operating to Egypt.

The Travel Corporation announced this week that its tour operators now had an open door to return to Egypt. Contiki, the youth tour operator, and Busabout will return in September. Trafalgar and Insight Vacations will resume operations in January 2015. Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection will return in September 2015. And African Travel and Lion World Travel are also preparing to resume offering trips to Egypt.

Last March Abercrombie & Kent took four coaches of 18 people, a total of 72, to Egypt on a President’s Tour led by A&K’s president Phil Otterson. It was a statement by the company of its support for Egypt’s beleaguered tourism industry and the large part of the Egyptian population that is dependent on it.
A&K’s President’s Tour of Egypt was considered an unqualified success so another was set for October, in preparation for a full return to operation in Egypt in 2015.

Calming Period Releasing Pent Up Demand
Meanwhile, Egypt had its elections, has a new elected president to go with its new constitution, rewritten after what were widely seen in Egypt as abuses of the old constitution by the country’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

With the political furor died down and the country hopefully on a new, calmer track, the aspirations of people around the world to travel to Egypt, a pent-up demand that built up for more than three years of practically no tourism in Egypt, can be let loose.