1. Public protests eat up (devour) Egyptian tourism<br />Egypt loses a billion dollars after the collapse of tourism sector and the flight of one million tourist from the fiery political and security unrests.<br />The protests in Egypt dashed the hopes of the workers in the tourism sector this season after a mass departure of tourists, who fled from the turbulent political and security circumstances resulted from the continuous public protests, which began on 25 January.<br />The vice-president of Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, said that nearly one million tourists left Egypt during the last week and that the tourism sector did fired 211,000 workers, ‘a number which is expected to reach half a million’.quot;
<br />He told the Egyptian television that, Due to the events, Egypt had lost a billion dollars in the tourism sector, which is equivalent to one third of the resources of tourism, trade, customs and other sources of income.<br />Suleiman also warned against the continuation such events that cripple the country and increase troubles and losses.<br />According to a report issued by the operations room of the Ministry of Tourism, the total number of the workers, fired by the owners of hotels and tourism facilities in the provinces of South Sinai, Red Sea, Luxor and Aswan, reached 211,000 over last week.”<br />The report pointed out that a large number of tourism companies and hotels decided to exchange only the basic salaries of the employees this February. These basic salaries do not represent more than 8% of the net income of the workers, thus enhancing the possibility of releasing more than half a million workers over the next few days.” This could lead to the release of more than half a million workers over the next few days.<br />El-Masry El-youm newspaper mentioned that many of tourism facilities were subjected to losses due to acts of sabotage , in addition to a big number of theaters, restaurants and tourist shops, which were targeted by acts of theft, looting and burning.”<br />Undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism for the control of the hotel sector, Ahmed Attia, said that 92% of the workers in the tourist shops are on an indefinite leave until the return of stability and activity of the tourism sector.<br />Attia added “Usually, this part of the year witnesses a massive turnout from the Arab tourists to spend the mid-year vacation in Egypt. But now, the Arab tourism, unlike previous years, is seeking other tourist destinations.”<br />He pointed out that the official estimates confirm that Egypt receives about 13 million tourists annually ــ 64% of them come from Western Europe and Russia, which is the most European countries exporting tourism to Egypt with 1.8 million tourists a year, followed by Germany and England with 1.2 million tourists, Italy with one million tourists, France with 600 thousand tourists, and Poland with 500 thousand tourists.<br />As for the numbers of the Arab tourists visiting Egypt, Libya ranks first among the Arab countries with 500 thousand visitors annually followed by Saudi Arabia with 450 thousand visitors.<br />The tourism sector share amounted to 19% of the total national income of Egypt, and 7% of the direct output of the national income, as tourism sector’s income reached 11 billion dollars by the end of 2008, increasing by 15% than in 2007.<br /> <br />