The Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Ahmed Eissa, announced today, Wednesday, that 11.7 million tourists visited Egypt during the year 2022, up from 8 million in 2021.

During a meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Issa said, "The number of tourists who visited Egypt during the past year 2022 amounted to 11.7 million," according to a statement by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which it published on its official Facebook page.

Eight million tourists visited Egypt during the year 2021, according to a previous statement by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, while about 3.7 million tourists visited it in 2020, and 13.1 million tourists in 2019.

The Egyptian minister added, "There are estimates that this year will witness a growth in incoming tourism by 28%, which contributes to bringing the number of tourists to 15 million."

The largest number of tourists was recorded in Egypt in 2010, when 14.7 million tourists visited, with revenues at that time amounting to $12.5 billion.

Eissa explained that incoming tourism to Egypt in January and February witnessed a growth of 35% compared to the corresponding period last year.

He referred to a set of important measures taken by the Egyptian state to increase the incoming tourist movement to Egypt, including facilities for obtaining tourist visas, and pointed to improving the legislative environment for the tourism sector and issuing new legislation.

He noted that the hotel capacity witnessed a development during the period between 2018 and 2022, and this development continued significantly from December 2022 to February 2023.

The Egyptian tourist expert, Mohamed Karem, commented on the increase in the number of tourist arrivals during the past year, saying that Egypt is one of the important tourist destinations in the world, and the return of the number of tourists who visited it to rise is a good thing.

Karem told Xinhua that Egypt did not rely only on beach and cultural tourism during the past period, but also attracted many other types of tourism, including festivals, conferences and Nile tourism, all of which contributed to the flow of tourism to Egypt.

However, the Egyptian expert saw that his country had not yet reached the tourist status it deserved, and pointed to several reasons that led to the decline in tourism in Egypt in recent years, such as the Corona virus crisis and the Ukrainian crisis.

He expected an increase in the number of tourists to Egypt during the coming period, especially that Cairo participates in many international tourism exhibitions such as the Berlin Tourism Exchange and others.