Egypt ranked last place in the Tourism safety index and has not been a primary location this year.
The World Economic Forum has, for the past seven years, engaged key industry and thought leaders through its Aviation, Travel & Tourism Industry Partnership Programme, along with its Global Agenda Council on New Models for Travel & Tourism, to carry out an in-depth analysis of the T&T competitiveness of economies around the world. The resulting Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report provides a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue to ensure the development of strong and sustainable T&T industries capable of contributing effectively to international economic development. The theme of this year’s Report, “Reducing Barriers to Economic Growth and Job Creation,” reflects the importance of the sector for this purpose.

Encouraging the development of the Travel & Tourism (T&T) sector is all the more important today given its important role in job creation, at a time when many countries are suffering from high unemployment.

The sector already accounts for 9 percent of GDP, a total of US$6 trillion, and it provides 120 million direct jobs and another 125 million indirect jobs in related industries. This means that the industry now accounts for one in eleven jobs on the planet, a number that could even rise to one in ten jobs by 2022, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.