CAIRO — In an interview with Al-Monitor Dec. 22 , Egypt's Tourism Minister Hisham Zazou said the “This Is Egypt" campaign, launched in early December to boost tourism to Egypt, will not include Russia and Britain at this stage. He confirmed that Cairo hired global consultancy firm Control Risks, which specializes in assessing risk at airports, to obtain an international certificate accredited by a neutral party to attest to Egyptian airports’ compliance with international safety standards. Zazou said this step was not taken as a result of weakness in the safety and security system at Egypt’s airports, which he described as very good.
Since the Oct. 31 crash of the Russian Airbus A321 in the Sinai Peninsula that killed 224 people, Cairo has faced a crisis in the tourism sector. Tourism is an important source of foreign currency revenue for Egypt and provides thousands of jobs. The crisis was exacerbated when a number of countries, including Britain, suspended flights to Egypt and Russia amid doubts that Egypt’s airport security was sufficient and concern over international reports favoring the theory that the crash was caused by a bomb smuggled aboard the plane by the Islamic State.
