Foreign Office Travel Advice - Luxor

The FCO yesterday changed its travel warning for Luxor and no longer advises against all but essential travel to there.

This is great news for all involved in tourism to Luxor but it now remains to be seen how quickly things get back to normal. Some of the charter companies had already cancelled flights for the next fews weeks and with a number of the Nile Cruise boats operating based on the flights some cruises may not start for several weeks.

Anyhow we all hope that over the coming weeks tourists return to all of Egypt as they will certainly need the economic boost.

Egypt unrest

Ive resisted posting anything on the current unrest for the simple reason that there is so much media attention as well as the other internet traffic - blog, facebook and twitter, that it does not really need anything else said, apart from what a terribly sad situation is.

Good friends of mine whose office happens to be in Tahrir Square have not been able to get to work due to the unrest and have no idea of the state of the office. Tourism in Cairo has ceased and having watched a John Simpson report this morning the attitudes of some Egyptians has turned quite nasty and you wonder how quickly this will change http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12387034

As someone who has worked in the Egypt Tourism industry for many years, been there many times and now a number of what I would call good friends it is both distressing and shocking at how quick things can deteriorate and I pray that somehow this ends quickly and peacefully.