Tourism: New resort planned for Al Alamein

Bloomberg

Egyptian billionaire Ibrahim Kamel plans to build a $500 million seaside resort near the World War II battlefield of Al-Alamein that will compete with Red Sea vacation sites in Egypt.

Kamel's Kato Group will construct 4,000 hotel rooms, a golf course, mall and entertainment complex in Ghazala Bay on the Mediterranean within five years, he said in an interview. Kamel, who is also chairman of Egypt's second-largest publicly traded hotel company, built a $45 million airport at Al-Alamein, a few kilometers from the resort, in 2005. . . .

The battlefield at Al-Alamein is where the Allies defeated General Irwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in 1942, reversing a German drive on the Suez Canal.

The fighting, between General Bernard Montgomery's 8th Army and Rommel's divisions, began along a German defense line stretching some five miles inland from the sea.

Kamel, a former academic and a senior member of the country's ruling National Democratic Party, is chairman of Egyptian for Tourism Resorts.