During INTOURMARKET 2010: Egypt celebrates 2 mln tourists from the Russian market.

Within the framework of the ITM 2010, Egypt-the partner country of Intourmarket2010 will declare 2010 as the Russian tourist year in Egypt. The reason is that the strong relations between the two countries led to achieving an unprecedented figure of 2,035,000 tourists from Russia to Egypt in 2009 with increase of 11.5% over 2008.

The ministry of tourism of Egypt considers it amazing number taking into consideration the aftermaths of financial crisis on both the Russian market and the destination and even compared to the average business world growth in 2009.

This declaration will be reflected in a number of activities over the whole year of 2010 such as:

1. Sponsoring two main tourist exhibitions in Russia: ITM-March 2010 in Moscow, and INWETEX CIS – October 2010 in St. Petersburg.

2. Organizing the Egyptian Night in parallel to ITM to celebrate this successful story with all the partners and to highlight more aspects of the Egyptian civilization.

3. Launching the Russian-Egyptian Tourism Business Club to gather all the playmakers in the market and the destination once a month in an open day to discuss all the raising issues in both market and destination.

4. Intensifying the Press Tours and Info Tours for 2010.

5. Expanding the joint activities with all the business sectors in Russia in 2010.

Worth mentioning that the Strategic Agreement signed between the presidents of the two countries last June along with the protocol of cooperation signed last March by the ministers of tourism of the two countries helped a lot to draw the framework of that progress. As a result, Egypt expects to receive 2.6 to 2.8 mln tourists by end of 2010.