Story 1 Tourist numbers down by 45% in August – year on year. Sounds not good.
Story 2 Tourist average stays are down from 9 days a year ago to 6.4 in August 2016.
Putting the two figures seems the real story is that total tourist days (a more accurate measure of economic impact – along with average spend) are down 62.5%. Sounds worse than not good.
The local spin is just that arrivals are down 45%. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... gains.aspx
On a positive note Egypt’s currency and local costs mean that it’s consistently voted second best cost/value option in the world.
Correct me if I’m wrong. The current year long collapse is mostly due to a terror Russian airline bomb – denied by locals – and that is due to poor local airport security. So its an own goal and who runs the airports?
Of course there was also the France-Egypt crash but Paris didn’t cancel flights – the Russians did. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/egypt/tourist-arrivals. and the decline after the French accident was much smaller.
On the other hand those with a horse in the race see some positives in bad times. According to them Cairo and Alex are doing OK whilst others not so – so its not a uniformly bad tourist story across the whole of Egypt: http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2016/10/1 ... rnational/
