JEDDAH — The Egyptian tourism industry has high quality service and Egypt is a secure and safe country for tourism, Bandar bin Fahad Al-Fahaid, president of the Arab Tourism Organization (ATO), said during a press conference with Egypt's Minister of Tourism Hisham Zaazou held on Saturday in Park Hayatt Jeddah. The Egypt Tourism Authority (ETA) unveiled during the conference a new campaign titled "This is Egypt". The purpose of the campaign is to launch a major regional awareness to drive growth in the Egyptian tourism sector. This initiative came after the negative impact of the Russian plane issue on the Egyptian tourism. Al-Fahaid explained that the claims about the non-existence of the security and safety condition in Egypt is not true. He added that Egypt today has a strong security system when it comes to tourism and the country is a safe place for tourism unlike the situation in some of the non-Arab countries where tourists could face unsafe conditions and incidents such as burglary, thefts, and murdering during the daylight. Egypt is one of the best countries when it comes to tourism development. "More importantly, Egypt has a high quality in the field of tourism services, especially in the city of Sharm El-Sheikh. If we look at the services offered to tourists, we will find that Sharm El-Sheikh is one of the best Arab cities in the tourism quality services," Al-Fahaid said. He emphasized the importance of attracting the Arab tourists, illustrating that the Arab tourist spending during a five- day trip is more than $4,500, while for the non-Arab , it will be between $300 to $500 not more than that. Tourism is an integrated system of using hotels, eating, shopping, and etc. It is not only about targeting one sector such as, hotels. It is more about targeting and benefiting from other sectors. Zaazou said: "Egypt tourism is a major issue nowadays especially after the Russian plane crash with its negative impact on tourism sector. While Arab Tourism Council during its recent meeting in Sharjah recommended that Egypt should be the first destination for Arabs, we invite all Arabs to visit Egypt during these coming mid-year holidays. "To Egypt and Egyptians, Arab tourists are the most valuable tourists. In 2014 Arabs over 1.5 million Arab tourists with 16% of total tourists visited Egypt among of which 300,000 were Saudis, compared to 1.5 million till end of October 2015 with an increase of over 1.7%," Zaazou added. "To Egyptians, Saudi tourists are the most important among Arab tourists, with average of twenty-night trips compared to 10 nights of Europeans. "#thisisegypt campaign meant to urge the national spirit among Egyptian youths, to explore all locations and sites in Egypt even the unknown regions including rural areas, photoshoot these sites and share their experience on the internet. We launched "#thisisegypt campaign ten days ago, after meeting Influencers. We can see that it is a very effective campaign and we have a very good impact out of it," Zaazou continued. "During #thisisegypt campaign, direct flights by Egypt air, Kuwait airlines which will resume on 22ned December in addition to the private airways all to Sharm El-Sheikh. Also special offers in diverse classes of hotels with minimum of $50 per night giving the best prices to Arabs." "Egypt is a unique experience and we invite all Arabs and Saudis to come and live and share this experience with us and explore all different regions in Egypt." "We have also facilitated visas for other nationalities accompanying Arab families to save the families any complications, moreover we have facilitated visas and airways complications for Al Maghreb Al Arabi countries (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). Zaazou assured that Egypt is completely safe and secure.
