By Akram Medhat
Minister of Tourism Yehia Rashed held a meeting with Hesham El-Demery, head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, and Amr El-Ezabi, the new tourism counselor in London, to set the office's work strategy for the coming period, which included developing alternatives and scenarios to mitigate the impact of the ban imposed by the British government on Sharm El-Sheikh airport, restoring inbound tourist traffic from the British market, and communicating and coordinating with the market's biggest tour companies.
For his part, Amr El-Ezabi expressed confidence in restoring tourist traffic from the British market, which has already begun to show some positive indicators, adding that despite British tourists' clear preference for the Red Sea region, in 2010 the share of British tourism in cultural destinations such as Luxor and Aswan was the highest.
It is worth noting that Amr El-Ezabi served as director of the Egyptian tourist office in Paris, then Canada, before returning to Cairo to serve as assistant to the Minister of Tourism. He then headed the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority from 2007 to 2012, then became an adviser to the minister, until a decision was recently issued for him to take charge of the Egyptian tourist office in London.
In a related context, Hesham El-Demery, head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, said that the criteria for evaluating the performance of the directors of the overseas offices have been finalized on a scientific and measurable basis, adding that these criteria have been approved by the authority's board of directors after being discussed with the tourism sector's representatives on the board.
He explained that specific mechanisms have been developed for the evaluation process, including forms to evaluate the performance of overseas office directors and their assistants according to measurable scientific criteria, noting that the evaluation system was activated from the beginning of January until the end of July 2017.
According to tourism statistics obtained exclusively by "Travel Yalla News", British tourism brought 147,000 tourists to Egypt in the first half of 2017, up 26% from the same period of 2016, and they spent 1.5 million tourist nights, an increase of 70%.
