Despite excluding the Red Sea Governorate from the curfew resolution to avoid affecting tourism, the governorate witnessed a collective fleeing of thousands of foreign tourists when several European countries notified their nationals in Egypt, Sinai Resorts and the Red Sea area to evacuate the country and issued a travel warning following the escalated violence in recent weeks. As a result, 255 hotels in Gurdagha and Marsa Alam remain empty.
Despite excluding the Red Sea Governorate from the curfew resolution to avoid affecting tourism, the governorate witnessed a collective fleeing of thousands of foreign tourists when several European countries notified their nationals in Egypt, Sinai Resorts and the Red Sea area to evacuate the country and issued a travel warning following the escalated violence in recent weeks. As a result, 255 hotels in Gurdagha and Marsa Alam remain empty.
“To understand how much tourism workers were affected by this crisis, we must acknowledge that the national income generated by tourism activity constitutes nearly 12%, which doubles the income of the Suez Canal. Furthermore, 5,000,000 people directly and 15,000,000 indirectly benefit from tourist activity in Egypt,” said Bishoy Isaac, a tourist guide and one of those affected by the interruption of tourist excursions to the Red Sea.
The tourism workforce is made up of employees in tourism companies, hotels and in tourism services and includes workers at sea, in safaris, at tourist bazaars inside and outside hotels as well as in other sectors.
Like Isaac, those working in the tourism sector believe that the drop in the number of tourists has affected other aspects of life in the governorate. Industries that fully depend on tourism such as handicrafts, leather, silverware and scented oils have been hit hard, as 20,000 tourist bazaars in the governorate offer these products.
Drop of foreign tourism
Fateh Mokhtar, executive director of a tourist company in Gurdagha, said his company used to receive 5,000 tourists every week, but following the outbreaks of violence and the drop in the number of European tourists, the company now currently receives only 50 tourists per week. He stressed that the consequences of this is the closure of dozens of hotels in Gurdagha as well as Marsa Alam and the dismissal of thousands of workers.
Mokhtar criticized the role of the tourism sector’s officials. He said businessmen and the Ministry of Tourism have contributed to the current crisis due to their failure to protect workers’ rights and the lack of adequate supervision by the ministry over tourist foreign companies that operate in Egypt and control the European tourism market.
Hotel workers are the most affected
Workers at hotels are the weakest link in the field of tourism as a large number of them were dismissed due to several reasons; 80% of them do not have contracts that guarantee their rights and some work under temporary contracts with low wages.
Isaac added that workers were forced to sign a resignation form before being employed, allowing them to be discharged at any time. In addition, foreign labor competes with the Egyptian one, thus wasting the local human resources in favor of foreign ones paid by hard currency.
Russians stand with Gardagha
Foreign labor in Gardagha has also felt the brunt of the crisis and the Russian community in Gardagha, including nearly 400 tourism personnel, organized a protest against the Russian authorities’ ban of travel to Egypt in order to convey a message to the world that the Red Sea area is safe.
“I participated in the demonstration and the Russian Community Conference in Gardagha to assert that Gardagha is a second homeland of Russians and that I live under stable security conditions,” said Olga Zachrchenko who has been working for a tourist company in Gardagha for five years. “We want to send a message that Gardagha is far from the events, emphasize our sense of safety and security and communicate the fact that Gardagha’s situation is safe to encourage Russians not to comply with warnings against traveling to Egypt.”
“Foreign governments are to blame”
Gardagha Chamber of Tourism only blamed foreign governments. Chairman of Board of Directors of the Red Sea Tourist Companies Magdy Saleh said: “The Italian government has warned its citizens against traveling to Egypt stating that it is concerned about its 20,000 nationals because of the escalated violence.” He added that the tourism sector has been collapsing for years and the current events make the situation even worse, underlining the fact that foreign tourism companies now refuse to deal with the Egyptian ones because of security and political unrest.
Problems and solutions
Bishoy described the problems of the tourism sector that have not been resolved following the January 25 Revolution, as suffering a total collapse. He attributed this to the fact that the state let businessmen manage the tourism system and appoint the Minister of Tourism after the approval of the Chamber of Tourism, a practice that causes a confusion of interest and made the Minister of Tourism a representative of tourism companies within the government.
“The tourism mechanism in Egypt must be changed in order to stabilize the tourism sector, which represents the most important pillar of the Egyptian economy,” said the minister. “This could be achieved through establishing a shareholding company that includes a number of Egyptian ones to work on selling the Egyptian products in addition to implementing Article 12 of Law No. 38 of 1977 stipulating that the Minister of Tourism has the right to set minimum and maximum prices of the services provided by tourist companies in order to prevent tourist market monopoly by certain companies,” he concluded.
