Tourists from Russia will be able to go to Egypt not earlier than 2018

Hisham Ali, head of the South Sinai Tourist Investors Association, said Egypt may not expect flights from Russia to open before 2018. Despite all the efforts made by the Egyptian government at the airports of the country in order to restore the flow of tourists from Russia to Egypt, the Russian side only puts forward new demands. I do not expect Russian tourists to return to Egypt before mid-2018, he told DailyNewsEgypt. It is probably not a security issue – the decision to open Egypt is not made for political reasons. “Tourism is now a lever of pressure. We have heard a lot of talk from Russian officials who have visited Cairo about resuming flights, but nothing has changed.

 

Rainbow plans of the Russian authorities passed in March: the speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko during a trip to Cairo said that the authorities of the country Pyramids left to fulfill only “four positions” before the final conclusion about the start of flights to Egypt – Russian requirements to date have been fulfilled by more than 90%. At that time, the main topic of the visit of the delegation from Russia was the issue of the beginning of air traffic between the states. It was the first time a delegation of this level had visited Egypt after a decade-long hiatus. After the plane crash, which occurred, and this is the largest plane crash in the history of Russian aviation, we can not even in detail not take into account the need for the strictest safety of flights, passengers and resorts. Special services and specialists of the two countries have done a tremendous job to ensure security at Egyptian airports. This plan has been fulfilled by more than 90%, Matvienko said. Earlier it was reported that the Russians will fly to the warm country “by the end of winter”, “by February 23”. And even before the beginning of 2016, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said, “there are literally one or two questions.”

 

The market was in a state of uncertainty a few months after the crash of the A321 in Sinai. The mood of the Egyptian side is understandable. Sharm el-Sheikh as the main resort of Sinai, according to Mr. Ali, survives at the expense of its tourists, and guests from Eastern Europe and Ukraine, there is a share of German travelers. On average, the occupancy of hotels reaches 50-60%, the main composition is generated by local tourists. It is impossible to repeat the Russian tourist flow (at least a third of the total number of tourists). “Egypt is now a safe country, and not the only one suffering from terrorism. Terrorism is happening everywhere, Hisham Ali said.

With “goodwill” on the part of Russia, relatively quiet accommodation options could be found. For example, to start the resumption of flights not to Cairo, as proposed by the authorities (this puts potential tourists at additional risk for domestic flights or ground transportation by bus), but to Hurghada, which is far from the troubled Sinai, the Nile valley and Cairo. No excesses related to terrorism have ever been recorded.

 

Currently, other participants in the Egyptian tourist market are in a sad mood. “The very situation with the negotiations raises a lot of questions: it seems that Russia is simply not interested in opening Egypt,” Sergey Zalivin, executive director of the Egyptian hosting company ALS-tour, previously commented to the correspondent of the Turprom information group.