By Akram Medhat
Statistics on inbound tourism to Egypt revealed a notable positive development in the turnout rate during 2017, as the total for the past 9 months reached about 5.9 million tourists, up 53% compared with the same period in 2016, which recorded the arrival of 3.8 million tourists.
Tourist nights reached about 60 million from January to last September, an increase of 164% from the same period in 2016, which recorded 23 million nights, approaching the rates of 2015, before the Russian plane crisis.
September and the Lead of the Third Quarter
Tourism statistics obtained exclusively by Travel Yalla News showed that September saw the arrival of 733,000 tourists, up 55% from the same month in 2016, who spent 9.6 million tourist nights, an increase of 212%, maintaining the tourism revival of the Egyptian destination since last July. The average tourist stay in Egypt reached 12.6 nights, the highest since the start of the tourism crisis in October 2015.
The third quarter of 2017 is the best period of the year so far, as the three months from July to September saw the highest tourist turnout, recording 2.3 million tourists, up 55% from the same period in 2016, who spent 28 million tourist nights, an increase of 207%.
August was the best month of this year, recording the highest arrival rate at 820,000 tourists, followed by July with 781,000 tourists, then September with 733,000 tourists, and August even tops all months since November 2015.
A table showing the monthly development of inbound tourism during 2017:
Month | Number of Tourists |
|---|---|
January | 543,892 |
February | 539,065 |
March | 654,877 |
April | 715,956 |
May | 573,810 |
June | 532,955 |
July | 781,192 |
August | 819,619 |
September | 732,730 |
Geographic Distribution of Tourists
European tourism recorded the highest rate of increase in the number of tourists arriving from it compared with other markets in the past 9 months, at 83% over the same period in 2016, reaching 3.2 million tourists, who represent 54% of total inbound tourist traffic to Egypt.
Asia was among the geographic regions that saw activity in tourism to Egypt, up 53%, recording 456,000 tourists, representing about 8% of total tourists from the various markets.
A table showing the geographic distribution of inbound tourism to Egypt from January to September 2017, compared with the same period last year:
Region | Number of Tourists | Change | Share of Total |
|---|---|---|---|
Europe | 3,180,693 | 83% | 54% |
Middle East | 1,505,524 | 25% | 25.5% |
Africa | 478,891 | 24.7% | 8% |
Asia | 455,747 | 52.5% | 7.7% |
The Americas | 260,029 | 26.5% | 4.4% |
Other | 13,212 | 26% | 0.2% |
Total | 5,894,096 | 53.4% | 100% |
