Society 363 / 2013

Ägypten
Interview
“I try to send the right
message to the world”
SOCIETY interviewed Hisham Zaazou, the Egyptian Minister
for Tourism, about the effects after the revolution and new targets
in the tourism sector.
Interview: SOCIETY
How was tourism affected
after the Egyptian
revolution?
Immediately after
the Egyptian Revolution
two years ago there
were negative travel advisories by many
countries which affected our business, and
by the time the travel advisories were lifted
it took a few months. So we ended the
year 2011 by losing almost 32 percent of
our business and thirty percent of our income
compared to the big year of 2010. In
that year we received 14.7 million tourists
generating an income of 12.5 billion US-
Dollars. In 2012 we started doing some activity;
we ended the year compared to 2011
with an increase in the number of tourists
by 17.4 percent and an income of approximately
15 percent. So we reached 11.5 million
tourists in 2012 generating an income
of 10 billion US-Dollars approximately.
Is tourism one of the more important
issues for the current government?
Tourism is very important because it
contributes 11.3 percent to our GDP. Of
every Euro or Dollar generated by the
Egyptian economy, 20 cents are generated
by tourism alone. The tourism sector employs
four million people.
Has the group of customers changed
a lot after the revolution?
No, the pattern is less business, but
the same source. In 2010 we had 76 percent
visitors from Europe, both East and
West; in 2012 it was 73 percent, still about
the same. The second largest market is
the Middle East, the Arab countries and
the Gulf. About twenty percent come
from there. The remaining six or seven
percent is the rest of the world. The main
competitors for us were Turkey and other
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