Egypt is one of the world's superpowers in terms of tourism. In a suburb of Cairo, pyramids of ancient kings such as Khufu and Khafre stand high. The tomb of Tutankhamun, whose mummy wore a golden mask, is located in Luxor, an old southern city.
People are attracted by the 7,000 years of Egyptian history they learn about in school textbooks, and the number of foreign tourists to the country once exceeded 14 million a year. Tourism became its largest source of foreign currency revenue.
However, when I visited the office of the Luxor Governorate recently, a remark by Gov. Mohammed Badr surprised me. He said Luxor will move away from a reliance on tourism.
Tourism has supported the livelihood of more than 80 percent of Luxor's residents. Despite this, the governor is prioritizing the promotion of the agriculture and energy industries. He said this policy is a result of repeated "shocks."
The first occurred about 20 years ago. At the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in western Luxor, about 60 people, including 10 Japanese, fell victim to a terrorist attack by Islamist extremists. The number of tourists plummeted, and tour guides were forced to halt their businesses.
The next shock involved the political turmoil that began six years ago. The number of foreign tourists last year was about 30 percent lower than before the political coup. Hotels were put up for sale and the jobless rate in Luxor, previously 3 percent, surged to 25 percent.
The governor said tourism is unreliable, and this feeling seems to have deepened.
In Egypt on the whole, the number of foreign tourists last year fell by about 70 percent compared with the peak years before the political turmoil.
Although the number has started to recover recently, the shortage of foreign currency reserves has continued. The exchange rate of the Egyptian pound against the U.S. dollar has fallen, and people are struggling with the rising cost of living.
Sevil Sonmez, a professor of marketing and tourism at the University of Central Florida in the United States, said tourism is easily influenced by critical situations.
Anxieties are spreading throughout the global tourism industry over a new "shock" - U.S. President Donald Trump.
The U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) criticized Trump's presidential order to restrict entry to the United States for people from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa. It said the order ran counter to the principle of the liberalization of movements of persons, and that it will damage profits in the tourism industry.
The UNWTO regards this policy as having a negative impact on the tourism industry, which has benefited from globalization.
Egypt is not among those seven countries, and there has not been an impact on tourism in the country so far. But Moustafa Munir, a researcher of the Ahram Center for Strategic Studies and an expert on tourism, said travelers from the United States and Europe to Islamic countries could possibly decrease due to fear of opposition by the Islamic world to the U.S. presidential order. He also said tourism is a fragile industry.
Tourism tends to be largely influenced by outside situations, yet it is also one of the few remaining growth industries.
The UNWTO has predicted that the number of tourists across the world will rise to 1.8 billion in 2030, up 50 percent from 2015. Because of this, more than a few countries regard tourism as a pillar of their economic growth strategies.
These nations should make collaborative efforts to maintain security without closing national borders.
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