Where have all the tourists gone? Egypt longs to see them return

By Annette Reuther Feb 14, 2012, 13:01 GMT

Cairo/Luxor - A Pharaoh sits in front of the gutted house as if nothing had happened. His hands are cast in stone and they lay resting on his thighs - for eternity it seems.

Protest has had little impact on this statue which graces the front garden of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, even though the flames of the blaze which wrecked the nearby party headquarters of toppled Egyptian leader Hosny Mubarak came dangerously close to devouring the museum's treasures.

Tahrir Square, the last year's revolution began, is only a few metres away. The winds of change swept across the land and frightened off the tourists who have stayed away to this day. Since then the Egyptian Museum has been characterized by one thing - yawning emptiness. Where the guidebooks once warned of long queues to see the antiquities and recommended arriving at dawn, only a solitary couple can be seen waiting today.

Similar scenes can be observed at the Giza pyramids, usually one of the busiest sights in the world. There are hardly any tourists around and little in the way of business for the camel and coach drivers and the vendors of tawdry plastic pyramids. 'Revolution price, cheap, cheap' they cry in unison to the scattered visitors who venture here. These are subject to even more frenzied sale pitches than would usually be the case.

The Arab Spring left an indelible mark on tourism last year, with overnight stays down a third compared to the previous year. The business of attracting visitors is a pillar of prosperity in Egypt and even though the tour operators are convinced that the sector will recover, there is little sign of this at the moment. This state of affairs is a disaster for many Egyptians.

Visitors with money to spend are not only conspicuous by their absence in Cairo, where protests continue. Talat Mulah sits in his camp on the edge of the White Desert - north of the town of Farafra with around 400 kilometres between his wicker chair and Tahrir Square - yet Talat feels as if the protestors were standing directly in Eden Camp. 'The tourists just don't come any more. They think the whole of Egypt is dangerous but actually nothing happens here, there is not a single demonstrator,' he says before inhaling the smoke of his water pipe.

And what does he think of the Revolution? Talat points to a few half-finished bungalows which he had intended to complete last year. 'No money left,' he says. Every person killed at Tahrir Square or TV pictures of violence there are a threat to his existence. His brother Mohammed takes a more optimistic view. 'We are having a hard time but it is good for our children.'

The high season is in full swing and in the normal course of events tourist buses packed with people would be disgorging passengers by the minute. 'You feel sorry for the people here but it's not paradise for us either,' says Rosalia Saavedra from Spain. She has visited Egypt on many occasions and is particularly keen on Luxor where this time around she was able to wander through the Valley of the Kings more or less on her own.

At the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatsehput only a handful of Japanese tourists are braving the heat to mount the steps up to the colossal building. Mohammed is meanwhile sitting in his souvenir shop in Luxor's souk market where the sign 'revolution price!' is evident. His neighbour exhorts shoppers to buy at bargain 'recession prices.'