More than 1.5 million Russians visited Egypt last year; and the main reason for Egypt gaining this popularity amongst Russian tourists is the easy access to the country, the tourism attaché at the Egyptian embassy in Moscow, Ismail A. Hamid, told APA in an interview ahead of the Moscow International Tourism Exhibition which opens here on Thursday.

The most favoured destinations for Russian tourists in Egypt include Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, Marsa Alam, Taba, Luxor, Aswan, Safaga, Al Ein El Sokhna and Cairo.

The historical relations between the two countries and the fact that Egypt was one of the first destinations that started to receive Russian tourists is also a contributing factor, he said further.

Hamid explained that his strategy for the next five years focuses on fixing another three places in the mind of the Russian tourists to be popular like Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada. Those three places are Marsa Alam, the northern coast and Taba. The most interesting in those names are the northern coast which is designed to launch a new dimension of expansion for the Egyptian tourism industry for the coming two or three decades.

“Our strategy targets now more the special segments of the tourists as we are now ready to receive the VIP tourists, incentive tourists, spa tourists and sports tourists. And again we offer the traditional tours to Luxor and Aswan with new approaches and new high-end hotels and services,” he said.

Hamid said “it is easy to talk about the historical relations between the Russian market and the Egyptian destination, and it is very hard task because of many factors. The vast Russian market, the huge number of media channels and the huge number of events make it so difficult to choose which of them to use to reach your target. Also, the strong competition in the market increases our need to invent periodically an innovative idea to remain on the top rank in the market.”
KKK/daj/APA
2009-03-17
http://www.apanews.net/apa.php?page=show_article_eng&id_article=91942

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French travel agencies companies will organize direct air flights to new Egyptian tourist destinations. The new trips will include weekly flights from Paris, Lyon and Nantes to Hurghada as well as flights from Paris, Lyon, Nantes and Deauville to Taba.

French companies also decided to increase the number of direct flights to Luxor; operating new trips from Lyon, Nantes, Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux and promoted new Nile River cruises, with visits to Sinai and the Red Sea.

The flow of French tourists into Egypt is flourishing. The count of French tourists who visited Egypt during the first half of 2008 increased 27 percent, bringing their number to 305,000 tourist compared to some 244,000 who visited the country during the same period last year. –MENA

http://dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=16823

September 15, 2008
More than 200 British passengers stranded in Taba by the collapse of tour company XL, have been flown back to the UK from the Israeli airport of Ovda.

The 210 passengers had booked their Egyptian Sinai resort holidays through Longwood Holidays and Peltours, which also run holiday programmes to Eilat.

The holidaymakers were due to have returned from Taba to Manchester on Monday on an XL charter flight, but after XL Leisure Group -which comprised holiday, flight and hotel companies – went into liquidation early last Friday, the holidaymakers were left without return flights.

Rafi Caplin of Longwood explained: “Initially, from their statements, we believed the CAA [Civil Aviation Authority] would arrange for our passengers to be flown home, but they then told us they had ‘no capacity’, so we had to arrange a flight. Sun D’Or, the Israeli airline, was very helpful, and had a plane available on Monday so it worked out well.”

Stuart Lewis, managing director of Peltours, said: “There wasn’t any panic. Our rep in Taba said that when she spoke to people over the weekend, they were very relaxed about it. They told her ‘We know they’ll get us back somehow.'”.

The operation was believed to have cost the two operators £84,000.

At the beginning of this month Egypt’s leading mobile operator Mobinil launched 3G services, covering large cities, tourist, industrial and corporate centres in Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm El Sheikh, Hurghada, Dahab, Taba, Safaga, Marsa Alam, Luxor and Aswan.

Mobinil has been hard at work revamping its network in preparartion for the launch 3G earlier this month

Since agreeing to purchase the 3G licence, Mobinil has since increased the number of installed base stations to more than 6,500, out of which 700 3G base stations and more than 2,100 EDGE-enabled base stations are in place.

Nokia Siemens Networks, along with Huawei has developed Mobinil’s 3G network, while Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola cooperated with Mobinil to establish the 2G portion of the network. This is in addition to the cooperation with Cisco Systems and Ericsson to develop and enhance the network infrastructure.

In April this year Mobinil did say it would delay the introduction of 3G services and payment of an EGP750 million (US$138 million) instalment on the licence fee by about two and a half months. At the time, the operator said the delay was necessitated because the regulatory authorities were late in handing over the frequency band needed for Mobinil to conduct the necessary tests before commercial service began.

Mobinil had been meant to receive the frequency band on January 17 but the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) did not say it was available until March 27, according to Mobinil.
Mobinil is the last of Egypt’s three mobile operators to launch 3G services, having initially refused to pay the licence fee asked by the NTRA.

“The licence condition set the value of a 3G licence (for the incumbents Mobinil and Vodafone Egypt) at 20 per cent of the price of the 2G/3G licence awarded to the third operator,” explained Alex Shalaby, CEO of Mobinil at the beginning of last year. “We thought this was high and elected not to bid for 3G at this time.” Etisalat bid US$2.9 billion to win Egypt’s third mobile licence, valuing the amount required to be paid by the incumbents for 3G licences at US$580 million each.