With the onset of the revolution, the tourism industry has suffered most — the sector accounts for 12% of Egypt’s employment and 10% of GDP. According to a report by Business Monitor International (BMI), tourist arrivals during the first half of 2011 dropped a staggering 70%.

The year started on a positive note and tourist arrivals in January 2011 had climbed 9% year-on-year. As the protests started to galvanize, it became obvious that the country would follow in the footsteps of Tunisia. Tourists raced to the airports leaving many of the country’s hotels empty for months on end. At the time, government statistics showed that one million tourists had fled the country.

Tourism arrivals fell further in February, recording a year-on-year decline of 80% and occupancy rates were down at a mere 11%. March brought a slight recovery with the year-on-year change in tourist arrivals down only by 60%.

Official figures for the third and fourth quarter have not been announced yet, but Hisham Zaazou, senior assistant to the tourism minister, was quoted by Reuters as saying that figures have improved compared to the beginning of the year.

“We expect around 30–35% less revenue than last year, which means it is going to be around $3.5 billion to $4 billion (LE 21.11 to LE 24.12 billion) less, so we are speaking about a figure [of] around $9 billion (LE 54.27 billion),” he said.

The tourism sector is always on the frontline whenever there are domestic, regional or international jitters. Terrorist attacks such as the Luxor massacre of 1997 and the Sinai bombings of 2004, 2005 and 2006, all saw tourist arrivals plummet. Later it was the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 that took its toll on the sector.

Despite the frequency of the events, the sector has proven resilient and recovery much faster than expected. Reham El Desoki, an economic expert with a major investment bank, explains that this resilience is attributed to the sector’s diversity.

“There is a great degree of diversity in the nationalities that visit Egypt; tourists come from different countries in the Gulf, Europe, US and Asia. At a time when there was an economic slowdown in the US, the Gulf didn’t suffer from the same problems and so tourists continued to come,” she says.

El Desoki further highlights that the international security situation has changed considerably in recent years as compared to the 1990s.

Terrorist attacks and incidents were and still are an international phenomena.

“When the terrorist attacks happened in Egypt, people didn’t take them as seriously as they would have a decade ago. They have become accustomed to it,” she says.

The Egyptian tourism industry’s competitiveness in price compared to other destinations makes it an attractive destination. Also, the variety in tourism products such as the beach, antiquities and conventional tourism goes a long way in alleviating potential drops in arrivals and revenues.

A revolution, however, is a situation of a different nature; any violence that used to occur in connection with a terrorist attack is an isolated incident. The problem now is the frequency and repetition of violence that happens almost on a monthly basis.

“The factors that strengthen the sector’s resilience still hold; however, the critical issue is that the repetition of clashes is now sending a message to tourists that Egypt might not be as safe as it was. Violence now erupts on a regular basis and is not confined to a certain place that people can avoid; we’ve seen incidents in Sinai and all over Egypt,” says El Desoki.

She believes that things could still turn around very quickly if the political situation settles and people understand that this is not an inherent condition.

“The problem is that tourists usually plan in advance and so for a rebound to happen the country has to stabilize for a while before tourists start planning trips to Egypt — there is a lag period.”

The sector’s recovery without a doubt hinges on the political situation and the end to the frequent violence that has gripped the country.

However, even when the political situation settles there are a lot of question marks as to what type of political system emerges from this revolution.

The rises of political Islam and recent statements by some Islamists have sounded alarm bells across the sector. “The Pharaonic culture is a rotten culture,” said Abdel Munim Al Shahat, a spokesman for the Salafi group Dawa who was speaking to the London-based daily Alsharq Al-Awsat. “[The faces of ancient statues] should be covered with wax, since they are religiously forbidden.”

With the Salafi Nour Party winning a quarter of the seats in parliament in the first two rounds of elections, comments like this did not go over well with those whose livelihoods depend on Egypt’s Pharaonic culture. El Desoki believes that it all comes down to the extent of the Salafis’ involvement in economic policy.

“This is an issue that people are watching closely, it still remains to be seen what the Salafis’ impact will be on economic policymaking. If their statements were just rhetoric to attract some of the stricter sectors of society, then fine,” says El Desoki.

She does however believe that once the Salafis are in power they will become more realistic in their approach.

“This sector is linked to many other sectors of the economy. […] They cannot afford to go on with a mindset like that. I don’t believe that their voters will re-elect them again if [people’s] livelihoods are affected by their policies,” she says. bt