Indian tourists heading to Israel through Egypt help increase occupancy rates in hotels in Nuweiba and Taba during the past week, Samy Suleiman, president of the Association of Tourism Investors in the cities of Nuweiba and Taba, said.
He added that occupancy rates in the two cities rose to about 80 percent in some hotels last week, due to the flow of Israeli tourists for holidays and Indian tourists heading to Israel for the celebration of the Jewish New Year.
The number of tourists coming to Egypt from India reached 35,600 during the first half of 2017, rising by 34 percent compared to the same period of 2016.
Owner of Abanoub Tourism Company in Nuweiba-Taba, Rabei Gad, said that the Indian tourist program in Egypt and Israel are usually carried out by Israeli tourism companies, in cooperation with an Egyptian company, to transfer them to Sinai where they visit Mount Sinai in St. Catherine city before heading to Israel through the Taba crossing.
The domestic tourism season, this year, has achieved great success and revenues in Hurghada which received about 3 million Egyptian tourists.
The monthly statistics of tourists who visited Hurghada, issued by Hurghada local authorities for September, showed that the city received 133,000 tourists from 25 different countries.
Germany topped the list with about 68,000 tourists. Ukraine came in second place with 12,000 tourists, followed by 9,600 tourists from Czech and 9,000 tourists from the UK.
Hurghada hotel managers announced a list of new prices for the winter season as occupancy rates started to decline after the end of the domestic tourism season.
New prices decreased between 15 and 25 percent.
Occupancy rates declined between 25 and 40 percent, and occupants are currently mostly foreign tourists in resorts.
The number of tourists arriving in Egypt rose 51 percent year-on-year in the first four months of 2017, with an expected “significant increase” starting this winter, chairman of the Tourism Promotion Authority Hisham El-Demery said in a press statement in mid-June.
Egypt said earlier this year it was confident that it could lure back millions of foreign visitors after the sector was heavily hit following two uprisings in 2011 and 2013.
Tourism revenues dropped to $3.4 billion in 2016, a 44.3 percent decline from the previous year.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
