The number of tourists visiting Egypt increased by 79.5 percent in October 2014 compared with October in 2013, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), Egypt’s official statistical agency.
In its monthly report for tourism statistics issued Saturday, CAPMAS indicated that one million tourists visited Egypt in October 2014, compared to 558,700 in September 2013.
In September 2014, the number of tourists visiting Egypt decreased to record 884,000, compared to 997,000 tourists in August.
The tourism sector saw a sharp decline in the number of inbound tourists during the months of July and August 2013 due to deadly dispersal of pro-Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins at Rabaa al-Adaweya and Nahda Square that killed at least 650 people following the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July.
The ouster of Morsi was followed by travel warnings on Egypt set by many European and North American countries.
The October report indicated that the increase of the visiting tourists could be due to the improvement in the security situations as some foreign countries have lifted travel ban to Egypt.
“Eastern Europe recorded the most areas for sending tourists during of October 2014 by 47%, followed by Western Europe by 30.4% and the Middle East by 14%,” the report read.
According to the report, tourists in total spent 9.8 million nights in Egypt during October 2014, compared to 3.9 million nights during the same period of 2013.
Egypt’s tourism sector, which represents 11 percent of the country’s GDP, has been suffering from ongoing shocks ever since the 2011 uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
14.7 million Tourists visited Egypt in 2010, compared with 9.5 million tourists who visited the country in 2013, according to CAPMAS.
Despite a few instances of apparent recovery, continuous instability, political turmoil and a lack of security have remained challenges to the sector.
