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Egypt’s tourism minister faces uphill battle to attract visitors

By Heba Saleh and Borzou Daragahi in Cairo

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/20c04b38-3284-11e3-91d2-00144feab7de.html#axzz2iI6nGYkp

Hisham Zaazou has been Egypt’s tourism minister for 14 months, making him one of the longest serving members of the cabinet. By his own account, it has been a rollercoaster ride.

When appointed last year, his challenge was to convince potential visitors and international travel companies that the then-dominant Muslim Brotherhood had no plans to segregate men and women on beaches or to demolish the pyramids and Sphinx despite calls for such radical measures from some vocal Islamists outside official circles

But now, after the military ousted Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood president, and embarked on a bloody crackdown which killed hundreds of his supporters, Mr Zaazou’s biggest hurdle is to persuade the outside world that Egypt is safe to visit.

To that end, he helped free two Canadians held inside an Egyptian jail for weeks, convinced pro-military channels to stop broadcasting “Egypt: War against Terror” logos on their screens 24 hours a day and struggled to convince other countries to remove travel advisories warning their nationals not to visit.

“There is no place on earth where it’s 100 per cent safe,” he tells the Financial Times, citing the terrorist attack on the Boston marathon last year.

Egypt’s ancient monuments and upmarket beach resorts have long attracted tourists, helping fill foreign currency coffers and providing jobs. But a low-level Islamist insurgency against police and mass killings of pro-Morsi protesters by security forces have fed perceptions that the country is on the brink of chaos, damaging a tourism industry that has been suffering since the January 2011 revolution.

Mr Zaazou calls the losses “quite catastrophic”, especially among those working in the cultural sector. “Their suffering is not from the day the recent travel advisories were issued, but rather starting from January 25, 2011,” he says. “There was no real upswing period.” He said however he has high hopes that tourism will recover in the next few months . The minister, a technocrat with a decades-long record in the industry, is taking heart from the fact that at least 12 countries, most of them in Europe, have lifted or eased negative travel advisories calling on their citizens to avoid some parts or the whole of Egypt.

“Seventy per cent of the business in recent years has been in the Red Sea and the Southern Sinai, and these areas, as far as the reports that I have, and the proof I have, are quite safe,” says Mr Zaazou. “I am saying quite, and not 100 per cent, because I’ll be honest: there is no place on earth where you can say, there is zero risk there. We did our homework at least for this part of Egypt and I can start promoting it.”

Tourism accounts for about 4m jobs in Egypt, according to Mr Zaazou, but the industry has been hit hard by the turmoil since the 2011 revolt which toppled Hosni Mubarak as president. Visitors peaked at 14.7m in 2010, bringing in $12.5bn in revenue. After dipping in 2011 to 9m and $8.8bn in revenue, the figures started to climb in 2012 to reach 11.5m tourists and $10bn in revenue.

Hotels and tour operators have had to drop their prices and attracted more frugal visitors who spend less on tips, souvenirs and optional extras, cutting deep into the incomes of many whose livelihoods depend on tourism. The average amount spent per tourist per night has fallen from $85 to $63, says Mr Zaazou.

Street fighting between police and demonstrators in Cairo has scared away visitors to the capital and all but destroyed cultural tourism centred on the Pharaonic monuments. Visitors who used to come to see the pyramids would then proceed to the south, where they travelled by Nile cruise boats between Luxor and Aswan, home of ancient archeological sites such as the Valley of the Kings. Only 30 of the 280 cruise ships that usually sail on the Nile are operating, and their occupancy is just 4 per cent.

To bypass troubles in Cairo, Mr Zaazou has signed a deal with Sun Express to fly tourists from German cities directly to Luxor, promoting Nile cruises as combination sun and cultural tours.

Around 72 per cent of Egyptian tourists come from Europe, including 2.5m Russians who frequent Red Sea resorts. But Mr Zaazou says he is eager to draw back big-spending US and Canadian tourists scared off by perceptions of rising anti-American hostility. In 2010, 361,000 Americans visited. “Today there are very little,” Mr Zaazou says, with dismay. “I would say closer to zero.”

Many countries and large travel companies follow the lead of the US, which has kept in place a draconian travel advisory warning Americans to avoid Egypt. Part of the problem, the minister concedes, are private pro-military television channels overtly hostile to President Barack Obama, who has called for Egypt to return to democracy. At recent pro-military rallies, protesters held up signs denigrating the US president.

“This cliché that Egyptians are anti-American does not help me promote tourism,” Mr Zaazou says. “We need to have a PR campaign in the US to to try and change the impression about the Egyptians and the relationship between Egypt and Americans.”

The minister’s job will not be helped by the death in custody in recent days of James Henry Dunn, a 66-year-old American, who allegedly hung himself in a prison cell in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya. He had been held since August on curfew violation charges.

Egypt’s stolen heritage

By Mohamed Ibrahim, Saturday, October 19, 1:54 AM

Mohamed Ibrahim is Egypt’s minister of state for antiquities and a professor of Egyptology at Ain Shams University in Cairo.

@www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/looting-egypts-heritage/2013/10/18/8a1effdc-380d-11e3-8a0e-4e2cf80831fc_story.html  

Egypt’s future lies in its history, particularly its archaeological history. For hundreds of years the mystery and wonders of the pyramids, the sphinx and the Valley of the Kings have attracted visitors from around the world. Tourism is the lifeblood of Egypt’s economy and touches the lives of most Egyptians, whether they work as tour guides, restaurant owners, craftsmen or bus operators. Egypt’s history holds the prosperity of the country’s future generations, including that of youths — more than 40 million Egyptians are age 30 or younger — who are seeking opportunities.

But thieves are raiding our archaeological sites and selling their findings to the highest bidders. They are taking advantage of Egypt’s security situation to loot our nation’s economic future and steal from our children.

Egyptians need the people and the government of the United States to support our efforts to combat the systematic and organized looting of our museums and archaeological sites. Imagine a world in which the stories of King Tut, Cleopatra, Ramesses and others were absent from the collective consciousness. And with much of our history still waiting to be discovered under the sand, the potential losses are staggering. Antiquities theft is one of the world’s top crimes — after the trafficking of weapons, narcotics and people — but it is seldom addressed.

Egyptian antiquities are flooding international markets. Recent auctions at Christie’s in London and New York included several items from Egypt. Fortunately, when contacted, Christie’s in London withdrew a number of items that had been stolen from the tomb of King Amenhotep III, discovered in 2000 in Luxor. Among the items was a steatite bust of an official dating from 1793 to 1976 B.C.

Although arrests were made in this case, and two auction houses in Jerusalem canceled the sale of 126 antiquities after being contacted by Egyptian officials, the tide unfortunately flows in the other direction. After being contacted by the Egyptian foreign ministry, other auction houses have been unwilling to cooperate with requests to delay or cancel sales of items that experts assess have been stolen. Among those who make their money selling antiquities, cooperation with the Egyptian government has been mixed at best.

Looting is a centuries-old business and a crime that Egyptians will no doubt be fighting for years, especially during difficult economic times. Our country is willing to take a strong stand. No one can forget the stark images of Egyptians — men and women, Muslims and Christians, young and old — creating a human shield to protect the Egyptian Museum in Cairo during the 2011 revolution. Still, thieves succeeded in stealing several items from its collection. Despite our government’s best efforts to retrieve those artifacts, more than 50 items, including some from the famous King Tut tomb, remain missing.

In the Aug. 14 attack on the Malawi National Museum, in Minya, more than 1,000 items were taken: statues more than 3,500 years old; jewelry from the time of the ancient Pharaohs; Greco-Roman gold coins. When security forces tried to stop them, the thieves burned some items they could not take, including mummies.

Every day, Egyptians risk their lives to prevent organized gangs from stealing our heritage. Our country is not the only place under attack: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Peru and Guatemala are suffering similar assaults on their heritage. Halting these crimes on our civilization will require a coordinated global effort — from both the “producers” and the “consumers.”

It is our common duty, in Egypt and around the world, to defend our shared heritage. International institutions, governments, business, archaeologists and other experts must come together to explore how to help countries in need protect their treasures. The efforts of groups such as the International Coalition to Protect Egyptian Antiquities are appreciated — but much more aid is necessary. The youths of Egypt deserve more. There is no time to waste.