Egypt taps private firms and long-delayed museum to revitalise tourism
PATRICK WERR and AIDAN LEWIS EGYPT, home to ancient pyramids and Red Sea resorts, aims to boost tourism by up to 30% annually over the next five years, bringing in private firms to operate sites and inaugurating a huge museum around the end of 2023, its tourism minister said. But it captures a little under 1% of the global tourism market, said Ahmed Issa, a former banker appointed as tourism minister last summer. The budget for more than 2,000 archaeological sites and 41 museums in the 2021/22 financial year was a modest 3.2 billion Egyptian pounds ($170 million at the…