Over 900,000 tourists visited Egypt this April. Following a brief recession, the tourist rate has grown again by 12.5% as against 818,000 in March, the MENA news agency said. All in all, 3.7 million tourists have visited Egypt, which was 5.3% year-to-year growth.

The majority of tourists, 111,900, came from Italy. Russia ranked second, being followed by the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Tourism is a main source of revenue for Egypt, while the other source is the Suez Canal. According to the official statistics, tourist business brought $6.6 billion in revenue in the 2004 fiscal year, which was an absolute record. More than 8 million tourists visited Egypt in 2004, which was 3 million more than in 2003.

The Egyptian Tourism Ministry hopes that 16 million people will be visiting the country ten years from now, which will require annual construction of 12,000-14,000 hotel rooms with the total cost of $1 billion.
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