Egypt booms again

Egypt's tourism industry enjoyed a strong recovery in 1999, two years after Islamic terrorists used machine-guns and knives to murder 58 foreign visitors in the historic city of Luxor.

According to the Central Bank of Egypt, 465,000 tourists visited the country in October last year, a jump of 85,000 on the same month in 1998. It is also up on October 1997, when there were 391,000 visitors, then a record.

But after the killings took place in November 1997, foreign tourists stayed away.

However, increased marketing of the country, coupled with greater resilience by international travellers to the risk of terrorism, has seen Egypt bounce back.

Although the first 10 months of 1997 saw 3.52 million tourists visit Egypt, just under four million went there in the same period last year.

Tourists spent a total of 2.9 million bed nights in Egypt during October last year. This compares with 2.1 million in the same month a year earlier and 2.5 million in October 1997.