CAIRO (Sputnik) — According to Hisham Zazou, the government also intends to introduce benefits for private and domestic transport companies engaged in tourism, in order to boost the tourism industry in the country.
Over the past week, a number of states, including the United Kingdom and Russia, imposed bans on flights to Egypt due to suspicions that the Russian Airbus A321 passenger plane crashed as a result of a terrorist attack.
Zazou said that Egypt has estimated its financial losses in the tourism industry at $273 million per month since Russia and the United Kingdom imposed ban on flights to the country. According to the minister, suggestion the current tourism crisis may last for three months and lead to combined losses of about $822 million.
Last week, Adviser to the Egyptian Minister of Tourism Mohamed Yousef said Russian and British tourists leaving Egypt would deprive the country of 70 percent of its tourist traffic, resulting in a "severe blow" to the industry, which constitutes over 11 percent of Egypt's GDP and brings more than 14 percent of foreign currency earnings into the country’s treasury.
A Russian Airbus A321 passenger plane crashed on October 31, en route from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. All 224 people on board were killed. The crash is the biggest air disaster in the history of Russian and Soviet civil aviation and one of the 30 most deadly air disasters of all time.
