Five hotels were shut down in Hurghada, and four others in Marsa Alam and Safaga on Tuesday, bringing the total number of hotels that have been closed in the Red Sea Governorate, due to the tourism recession, to 86 hotels out of 248 hotels.
As for the hotels that managed to stay open, the occupancy level has declined to 24 percent, making use of the domestic tourism, as well as the Czech Republic, whose administration decided to end its travel ban to Egypt.
Some Russian tourists have also been keen on visiting Egypt, via Ukraine, despite the official ban imposed by their country.
Secretary General of the Chamber of Tourism Establishments in the Red Sea Hatem Mounir said that the emergency fund of the Manpower Ministry has addressed the Egyptian Tourism Federation to give aid to the hotels affected by the recession, especially in the Red Sea. The procedures of the aid are under implementation.
In Luxor, tourist occupancy rate continued to decline reaching 2.5 percent, totaling 789 tourists in 59 hotels. Of those in Luxor 240 tourists stayed in 46 regular hotels while 549 of them stayed in 13 cruise ships traveling between Luxor and Aswan.
The head of the Chamber of Tourism Companies in Luxor, Tharwat Agamy, expressed his hoped for German tourism to resume by the end of September, as Berlin will have ended its ban on tourism flights to Egypt as of 30 September, instead of 15 October.
He also expects that the German decision would be followed by similar steps from the UK, France, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Belgium, starting in October.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
