Nearly two months after the announcement of the closure of the hotel in Egypt, Mohris Malak received a health certificate issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Health, which meant that his hotel could finally be reopened.
Malak operates a four-star hotel in the province of Qina, more than 500 kilometers south of the Egyptian capital Cairo. In order to meet the requirements of the Ministry of Health, he installed a disinfection door at the entrance of the hotel, hired a doctor, and took many measures to the restaurant to ensure that the distance between customers when dining.
In addition to the Malak hotels, there are more than 70 hotels in five provinces including the Red Sea, Alexandria and Cairo.
Ala Akelle, chairman of the Red Sea Provincial Hotel Association, a major tourism province, told Xinhua that there are a total of 252 hotels in the Red Sea province, of which 83 have applied for health certificates from the Egyptian Ministry of Health, but only 41 have been approved.
Akile said that despite the reopening of some hotels, the public beaches in the Red Sea province will remain closed, and the beaches in the hotels can be reopened after taking strict precautions. Private yachts can be re-operated, but if the epidemic prevention measures are violated, the license will be revoked and fined.
The reopening of the hotel was a decision made by the Egyptian government to restart the domestic tourism industry. Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Cultural Heritage Khalid Anani said on May 3 that after satisfying the relevant conditions, some hotels in Egypt will be reopened.
Anani said that eligible hotels before June 1 can only open 25% of the rooms, after June 1 can open 50% of the rooms. The hotel must be equipped with clinics and doctors to provide customers with personal protective equipment, weddings or large gatherings are prohibited.
In addition, each hotel must designate a floor dedicated to isolate the confirmed or suspected case of the new crown. The restaurant is also subject to many restrictions, such as no buffet, no hookah, and a certain distance must be maintained when dining.
Akeller said that although Egypt ’s reopening of some hotels can stimulate the development of the domestic tourism industry and allow some unemployed people to work again, but because Egypt ’s international flights are still suspended, domestic tourism revenue cannot compensate for the losses caused by the epidemic to the tourism industry.
"The opening of some hotels this time is just a pilot, the purpose is to test whether the Egyptian tourism industry is ready to re-run." Akeller said.
Tourism is one of the main sources of income in Egypt. According to data released by the Central Bank of Egypt in March, Egypt received a total of more than 13 million tourists in 2019, with tourism revenue exceeding US $ 13 billion.
After the outbreak of the new crown, in order to control the spread of the epidemic, the Egyptian government took a number of measures such as curfews, closure of beaches and hotels, closure of museums and archaeological sites, and suspension of all international flights, but these measures also caused a serious impact on the Egyptian tourism industry. According to official Egyptian estimates, Egypt ’s tourism revenue is expected to decrease by US $ 5 billion in the fiscal year 2019 to 2020 (July 2019 to June 2020).
