In the light of the hijacked EgyptAir flight, Kinda CHEBIB, Lead Analyst, Euromonitor International made the following comment:
“The events of today are again a negative development for the Tourism industry in Egypt and its economy. The hijacking of EgyptAir plane carrying 64 passengers and forced to land in Cyprus, come just months after the Russian plane crash over the Sinai Peninsula. Even if recent developments confirms that this is not a terrorist attack but rather an asylum seeker who want to join his ex-wife, this raises further concerns about security at airports in the country. The crash devastated Egypt’s tourism industry, with Russia and the U.K. -two of Egypt’s major tourism markets – suspending their flights to the country (until today). With almost 3 million arrivals, Russia was the largest inbound market in 201; U.K is the second biggest market for Egypt with 1 million arrivals.
If we analyse tourist’s performance prior the political unrest in 2011 and recurring attacks by jihadist militants (such as Sinai), arrivals from key markets plummeted in 2011 and started gradually to recover until this year. But those never achieved the performance from prior the events.
Egypt can restore its image when it comes to specific, location-limited events, but when we speak of such big proportion of security breach, and when international terrorists groups are involved in the frame of a larger geopolitical issue, there is no doubt that it will take a while for the Egyptian tourism and economy to get back on its feet. We can therefor speak of an impact on the mid to long term.
Travellers are likely to remain very hesitant to travel to this part of the Middle East and will opt for destinations like the Gulf countries or in North Africa they are likely to choose Morocco, contrasting with more vulnerable destinations like Tunisia and Egypt. Although Egypt is known for quickly bouncing back from different crises, we believe that the recent events will slow down the ambitions of the local government to achieve the target of 20 million foreign tourist arrivals by 2020.”
Key figures EUROMONITOR data:
· Despite the decline of-18% in 2012-2013, 2014 was a good year for the country, inbound flows rose by 8% to reach 10.2 million arrivals, up from 9.5 million in 2013.
· UK is the second biggest source market for Egypt with 1 million arrivals in terms on trips to the country in 2014 after Russia which recorded in 2014 nearly 3 million arrivals.
· Russia was also the fastest growing source market for Egypt in 2014, registering a 18% growth in 2013-2014
· Italy represents the fourth biggest source market for Egypt. However, arrivals from Italy declined by almost 50% in 2009-2014
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