The World Tourism Organisation has confirmed it will seek to develop its collaborative relationship with Egypt in order to strengthen tourism in the country.

Areas of cooperation include new accommodation quality standards, the development of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), and the UN Millennium Development Goal Fund (MDG-F) Dahshour project on rural tourism.

Pictured: Sharm el-Sheikh is one of the most popular resorts in the Middle East

The cooperation established on accommodation standards follows the desire expressed by Egypt to enhance its hospitality industry as the country witnesses a significant surge in investment especially in the hotel industry.

Hotel capacity has increased by approximately 7,000 rooms in the period of one year to a total of 220,000 hotel rooms.

Under this partnership, UNWTO has trained a select group of specialized auditors which now carry out quality audits of Egyptian accommodation establishments.

The move comes as Egyptian continues to recover from a spate of shark attacks earlier this year.

A number of people were hurt in attacks in the seas surrounding the popular destination of Sharm el-Sheikh, with beaches closed in response.

Impact of Tourism

UNWTO is also working closely with Egypt in enhancing its capacity to measure the economic impact of tourism and provide consistent, internationally-benchmarked tourism statistics by strengthening the TSA project.

This will allow providing supporting evidence to consolidate tourism’s economic significance, as well as its social impacts, potential, and future prospects.

Progress has been made to date on issues such as estimates of inbound, domestic, and outbound tourism consumption, employment in the tourism industries, as well as non-monetary indicators.

Meanwhile, the Dahshour MDG-F project will help foster the development of sustainable rural tourism through capacity building initiatives promoting entrepreneurship for tourism SMEs, the development of tourism guides, and enhancement of national capacities to protect and manage the archaeological and natural resources of the area.

Tourism in Egypt

Tourism represents Egypt’s largest growing source of foreign currency and the main generator of employment opportunities.

To enhance tourism’ potential as a job generator, the government has invested strongly in human resources.

The ministry of tourism in cooperation with the Egyptian Tourist Federation have been implementing an intense human resources training program with the participation of over 100,000 trainees.

Specific training includes that of drivers of tourist vehicles. In this framework, a dedicated training centre has been built, which is the first of its kind in the Middle East.

World Mobi

Also in the Middle East today, World Mobi is celebrating the success of its new city guide to Cairo. 

World Mobi offers the most comprehensive mobile travel guides available, with over 800 cities in 200 countries listed. Each is developed by the World Mobi team to combine into a single global travel directory.

However, each city retains its own mobile identity via a dedicated domain. Already on offer are Brussels.Mobi, London.Mobi, Sanfrancisco.Mobi and Sydney.Mobi.

Cairo.Mobi is the latest in this illustrious line up, offering click to call functionality – which means no scribbling down telephone numbers.

Most entries are also linked to websites where users can quickly access more detailed information if needed.

Other key features include information on accommodation, restaurants, attractions, entertainment, nightlife, shopping, and transport.

World.Mobi guides include user reviews and traveller utilities such as a translation guide, currency converter, news and local weather guide.