Egypt visits India to encourage tourism

Posted on Tuesday 19 October 2010 in Egypt

Egypt plans to significantly increase its inbound tourism from India, according to the SME Times.

Tourism officials in Egypt recently met with Indian tour operators in an effort to encourage promotion of Egyptian travel. According to the news source, the country's Tourism Authority would like to see one million annual Indian visitors by 2015.

The goal is quite a stretch from Egypt's current count of Indian tourists, which reached close to 78,000 in September. Officials expect to have 100,000 visitors from India by the end of the year, according to Samy Mahmoud of the Egyptian Tourism Authority.

"India is very important to us, both as a country and from the tourism point of view," Mahmoud said, according to the Times.

Adel El Masry of the Egypt Tourist Office noted that tourism accounts for 11 percent of the country's gross domestic product, which is why they are looking towards India, whose economy has greatly improved in the last year.

During their visit, Egyptian officials noted that there are several Bollywood films shooting in the country, which might be attractive to Indian tourists. 

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