Monday, April 28, 2008

Egypt to develop ecotourism and medical tourism to increase earnings

Yahoo! News

Egypt hopes to boost its tourism earnings by 26 percent to 12 billion dollars by 2011, the official MENA agency reported on Saturday.

According to a plan launched by Tourism Minister Zuheir Garana, Egypt hopes to welcome some 14 million tourists in 2011, requiring a capacity of 240,000 hotel rooms, compared with 11 million in 2007, MENA reported.

The minister said Egypt wants to attract private investors to fund the ambitious plan which also includes developing eco-tourism and medical tourism, limiting the government's role to supervision and planning.

Ecotourism and medical tourism are very interesting offshoots of the tourism industry. These and other off-shoots were the focus of a special issue of the magazine Third World Resurgence which, if you are interested, I have summarized and provided links to on another blog. I've checked and the articles are still available in MS Word format on the TWN website.

No comments: