Is Egypt Safe Enough For You?

So as you may or may not have heard, tourism isn’t exactly booming in our fair land. Let's chalk it up to shark attacks and call it a day. Let's just kill all the sharks! Just kidding. Anyway, Egyptian authorities are doubling their efforts to attract foreign tourists by opening the door for security delegations from other countries to come on over and assess the safety of touristic areas across the country.

This international campaign comes in the wake of the Feb 16^th South Sinai bombing of a tourist bus that killed four people (three of whom were tourists). Soon after the attack, a number of countries including France and Germany issued warnings against travel to Egypt and advised their citizens to evacuate the Sinai area. This was just the most recent blacklisting of our previously tourist-friendly nation; after Morsi's downfall, a good twenty-something countries issued travel warnings against Egypt, but these were later eased (forget the massive hit tourism took way back when Hosni Mubarak was ousted). Regardless, thanks to that Feb 16^th bombing, the international community is once again apprehensive about sending their citizens here. So our latest effort to try and prove that no guys, we don’t bomb our tourists!, was tourism minister Hisham Zaazou's announcement at the ITB Berlin this Sunday, encouraging international security teams to be sent over and clear us for happy tourism again. Let's hope it works. Fingers crossed.