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| Egypt fears fresh blow to tourism 2003-02-24 10:53:51 |
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CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- British tourist Keith Mason waits patiently with dozens of other foreigners in a long line at the ticket office in the shadow of the majestic pyramids of Giza.
Tourists from all over the world flock to see the three giant pyramids, the 5,000-year-old remains of what most experts agree was the most stunning of the early human civilizations.
But Egypt, desperate for the hard currency from its multi-million dollar tourist industry, knows there are limits to what globetrotters will accept to see the structures for themselves -- such as a war in the region which many people fear is all but inevitable.
The United States is massing troops in the Gulf ahead of a possible invasion of Iraq over weapons of mass destruction it says Baghdad is hiding. Iraq denies it has any but that has done little to stave off the likelihood of a major jolt to already fragile regional economies.
\"It\'s a dream to visit the pyramids,\" said the sunburned Mason, a 43-year-old engineer from Brighton.
\"But if there was a war in Iraq, I would take the next plane home. The Middle East would be too dangerous.\"
Other visitors wandering the pyramids plateau, which buffers one of the world\'s most cacophonous capitals from the edges of the vast Sahara desert, share the same gloomy assessment.
\"Nothing could stop me from going straight home if there\'s a war,\" said Joerg Kraemer, a German history student touring with his girlfriend during university holidays.
\"Although Egypt is far away from the Gulf, I would be too scared to stay here in the region. You never know what could happen here, if there was a terrorist attack or rising hostility against foreigners,\" he said.
Series of jolts to tourism
Egyptian tourism -- a key source of foreign currency earnings along with remittances from Egyptians abroad, receipts from the Suez Canal and oil exports -- is highly vulnerable to external shocks and any signs of regional tension.
The roughly four billion dollars a year industry had only just recovered from the 1997 massacre of 58 foreign tourists at the southern tourist spot of Luxor when a violent Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation erupted in 2000.
Together with the September 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities and their aftermath, the regional tension scared away many sun-seekers and culture vultures from abroad.
Thanks to strenuous government efforts to promote tourism, including cut-price charter tours straight into newly-developed resorts and a wide range of other special deals, Egypt managed to win back tourists and had its best month ever in August 2002, with a total of 574,000 visitors.
So far, tourist numbers remain solid, and the state news agency MENA reported recently that 16 charter planes with 3,000 tourists landed in a single day at the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, a European package-tour center.
Tourism Minister Mamdouh el-Beltagi told Reuters in September that the impact of an Iraq war would be minor since Iraq was far away from Egypt, which would not be a party to the conflict.
But most sector insiders paint a different picture.
\"A U.S.-led attack on Iraq could additionally destabilize any efforts for complete (tourism) revitalization,\" the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt said in a recent report.
\"Until now, hotel and travel bookings are rising or stable, but the situation could change very quickly,\" a Cairo travel agent said.
Modern Egypt\'s life-blood
Like the River Nile, along whose banks most of Egypt\'s 69 million population live, tourism is the life-blood of this desert land and directly or indirectly employs some 2.2 million people.
Officials say the tourism sector represents more than 11 percent of gross domestic product and Egypt attracts a whopping 25 percent of the tourists who come to the Middle East.
Apart from Pharaonic Egypt, religious sites such as Cairo\'s famous al-Azhar mosque, the St Catherine\'s Monastery near Mount Sinai and magnificent Red Sea diving sites attract millions of tourists a year.
\"A war would be a disaster for me. Nobody would come and buy anything anymore,\" said Mohamed Said, who runs a papyrus shop in the old city of Cairo.
\"Most tourists (who come now) obviously don\'t have much money. Prices are declining. If I sold a piece of painted papyrus for 900 pounds ($163) five years ago, I am getting much less now,\" he said.
Suleiman Mahmoud, a 53-year-old school teacher who moonlights as a tour guide, said the specter of war was casting a shadow over Egypt.
\"Life will become much more difficult for me and my family,\" he said. \"A new war would be like Luxor, when nobody came to Egypt for a long, long time.\"
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