Rediscovering Egypt part 2
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Hagglers, grabbers, touts and sellers. If there is one universal complaint regarding the Egyptian tourist experience, it is the heavy-handed tactics employed by the country’s street vendors. Tales ranging from being hassled by children to being engulfed by an entire souq are not uncommon, as traders try to sell their wares to unsuspecting tourists who are dazzled by fast speech, imitation Egyptology and soaring desert temperatures. The problem is that under the current environment, it’s getting worse.
It would be remiss not to mention the biggest sticking point that many travellers have with Egypt in these articles. However, the problem is worth noting for another reason; it can be used as an example of everything that is currently going wrong with the country.
Having spent a couple of nights in Cairo as part of our press trip with Abercrombie & Kent, I was fascinated to see more of Egypt. The country’s capital is undoubtedly suffering at the hands of the tourism downturn, however in many ways it is in a protective bubble which is similar to London’s relationship with the rest of the UK. If you want to see how Egypt is really affected by the decrease, you need to get out of Cairo and into the provinces.
For this we were flown an hour south of Cairo, to Aswan, Egypt’s most southerly city, lying north of the Sudanese border, to take a Nile cruise to Luxor. In Aswan, and the places that lay dotted around the Nile’s famous sites, the effects of the tourism drought are far more evident. It was here, in places like Karnak and Edfu where the local population is really struggling and there is a sense of desperation on the sandy streets.
Stepping off a coach and walking into a bazaar is a strange experience right now. As soon as we came within sight of the vendors, they would all rise in unison, as one weary wave. These are retailers who, in better times, would have had a constant stream of cash-laden tourists, all wanting to take a little bit of Egypt home. Now, times are harder. In some of the more off-the-beaten-track destinations, there might only be two or three groups visiting each day. The competition has never been so fierce amongst these traders and it is only when you take a step back and view the entire problem within a broader context that you can get an idea of how desperate the situation truly is.
It is true that Egypt’s tourism figures are up on last year. However these are both from a disastrously low base rate and heavily skewed in favour of destinations like Sharm El Sheikh, which have been virtually unaffected by the uprisings and change in government. And, while the former is the cause of a lot inbound consternation, it is the latter that is doing real damage to the country’s tourism industry.
Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government is fast approaching its one year anniversary and much of the public has been left disenfranchised with the incumbent administration. Morsi has been introducing an increasingly religious rhetoric to his government’s agenda – including appointing a number of Islamist allies as regional governors – and unfortunately tourism does not appear to feature highly on his list of priorities. It is no coincidence then that the government has held talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a US$4.8bn loan. Anyone involved in the Egyptian tourism industry will tell you that this amount could be generated in a matter of months by increasing Egypt to its former glory in the eyes of tourists.
To put it into context, in 2010 around 14 million people visited the country, a number which generated around US$13.6bn in revenue. In 2011 – the year of the Arab Spring – visitor numbers dropped by 37% to around nine million, according to Euromoney International. The news agency Reuters wrote that the unrest knocked about US$4.6bn off the year-on-year tourism revenue that year. If the Muslim Brotherhood took tourism half as seriously as they should be doing, they would have no need for taking out these highly publicised loans.
There are few countries which depend on tourism as heavily as Egypt within North Africa.
Unfortunately that is completely at odds with the government’s plans going forward. As we move towards that one year anniversary the chance of there being more trouble in Cairo’s Tahrir Square seems more and more likely. The damage this could do to Egypt’s economy could go far beyond the reach of an IMF loan.
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