Up to 15 percent of Egypt’s national output comes from tourism, which is a key source of foreign currency
The first quarter of 2021 saw Egypt’s hotel occupancy rates at between 40 percent and 45 percent, an official from the tourism ministry told Reuters.
Hotels are running at half capacity in line with COVID-19 regulations, but according to Reuter’s calculations, these rates would represent occupancy rates of around 52 percent if running at full capacity.
In February, Minister of Tourism Khaled El-Anani stated that tourism numbers were at between 270K and 290K tourists on average per month in the previous three months.
Egypt received 500,000 tourists in the first three months of 2021 and earned tourism revenues of between $600 million and $800 million, deputy tourism minister Ghada Shalabi said earlier this month.
Up to 15 percent of Egypt’s national output comes from tourism, which is a key source of foreign currency.
The tourism industry saw a 70 percent fall in 2020 due to the pandemic and lockdowns, with numbers of visitors sinking to 3.5 million from 13.1 million in 2019.
At the start of 2020, it was expected that Egypt would receive over 14 million tourists.
Hotel occupancy rates in January was 25 percent, which then increased to 30 percent in February, before jumping to 45 percent in March, the tourism official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
