Considering the instability of Egypt recently, most of the domestic tour operators in China have chosen to cancel tours to Egypt during July and August with full refunds to purchased products.
EGYPT – Since the eruption of turmoil in Egypt, its tourism marketing has been terribly affected. According to sources, large travel agencies in China such as Caissa and UTour have already cancelled their tour arranges to Egypt in August with full refunds to purchased products. However, whether they will rearrange tours in September remains to be uncertain.
Chief Representative of Waleed Tours (Egypt), Reed Wang indicated that although tours to Egypt in September were said to be operated as planned, uncertainty still remained. However, he showed at the same time optimism on the recovery of the market in a short term. He said, speculated by Egyptian domestic media, this unstable situation in Egypt would last for a week or so, after which, everything would be back on track, so as its tourism market.
Further information was given by Reed Wang that pyramids and the Egyptian Museum have already reopened to public this week and attractions such as Luxor are welcoming tourists as normal; while the capital city Cairo is still suffering from chaos, tourists in Egypt are led to other destinations to get away from this area. He pointed out that the hotel occupancy rate in Cairo now is about 10% and that of Luxor is 20%, on contrast, the figure of hotels along the Red Sea coast is up to 80 to 90%, completely free from influence by the turmoil in capital.
“Chinese government and Egyptian Government are well cooperated all the time and Chinese Ambassadors will be invited to investigate local situation afterwards” he said. “If they find stability back to the country where visitors can visit safely, Chinese travel agents will then agree to send tourists out again.”
