Egypt's Minister of Tourism, Ahmed El Maghrabi, denied reports that the number of tourists visiting Egypt declined following the October 7 attacks on the Hilton Hotel in Taba.
There has only been a 5 percent decrease since then and all reports claiming otherwise are "void of truth," he said at a recent meeting with tourism editors. "The cancellations were only in the Sinai areas of Taba and Nuweiba", he elaborated.
But the Taba attacks, however, influenced the expected rates of growth of the Egyptian tourist activity, dropping from the expected 17 percent to 15 or 16 percent," he noted.
"Undoubtedly, attacks such as these influence tourist traffic to the area, where they happened, but the serious attempts to capture the culprits and the swift action to contain the negative repercussions of such an act, have managed to keep the problem from turning into a crisis," he said.
The October 7 attacks killed 34 and injured 120, including many Israelis. (menareport.com)
