Is Egypt safe?

Egypt again finds itself in the worlds eyes with the return of demonstrators to Tahrir Square and the very unfortunate death of some of these people during clashes with the authority's.  Of course this only has a negative impact on tourism in what should be a very busy time and we have certainly seen a reduction in enquiries along with negative comments from some people who had been looking to travel there.

But is it safe? We actually had clients in the Egyptian museum on the first sunday of the unrest and they certainly said that they were not worried by the demonstrations and enjoyed their time there. Further of all the recent posts on sites such as trip advisor from tourists who are in Egypt or who have spoken to people who are there, none have said it is not safe or not to go. The FCO travel advice has of course been updated but there are no travel restrictions in place.

So the reality is that whilst things look bad from what we see on the TV in Tahrir square, Egypt's tourist areas carry on working as normal. Its unfortunately a shame that the same cameras that are stationed in Tahrir Square could not travel around Egypt for a couple of days to Luxor and some of the Nile Cruises as well as some of the Red Sea resorts just to show that life there carries on as normal.

World Travel Market

Next week is the main trade show for the travel industry - WTM - and it promises to be an interesting if tiring week. As well as our Egypt FIT business we will be talking to agents about our new partnership with Joyetour for inbound FIT and group business to Turkey.

Turkey has experienced phenomenal growth over the last few years and especially this year partly due to troubles elsewhere in the Middle East. In the first 7 months of this year over 11 million tourists visited, an increase of over 10% on the same period last year.

Supported by one of the biggest tour operators there we believe our new partnership will develop strong business relationships which will add to Turkeys tourism growth.