Special to WorldTribune.com

CAIRO — Egypt has invited foreign governments to review its security and assess threat levels as the tourist season approaches.

Officials said the military-backed regime would allow Western and other countries to send specialists to determine the threat level to tourists in Egypt.

The officials said the decision was sparked by an alert by NATO states of Al Qaida-aligned attacks against Western visitors.

Tourism comprises 11 percent of Egypt’s gross domestic product. Egypt has pledged to develop the Red Sea coast of Sinai for tourism and received applications for seven projects worth some $400 million.

“Security delegations will be allowed to inspect conditions and even recommend ways to enhance protection,” an official said.

On March 2, Egyptian Tourism Minister Hisham Zazou announced that his government was ready to cooperate with any foreign security assessment. Zazou, addressing a tourism exhibition in Germany, maintained that tourists were safe in Egypt despite nearly daily Islamist attacks on police and security forces.

So far, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland have warned against traveling to Egypt’s turbulent Sinai Peninsula.

The warnings were issued in wake of a bombing of a tourist bus along the Sinai border with Israel in February 2014 in which three South Koreans were killed. The Al Qaida-aligned Ansar Beit Maqdis claimed responsibility for the attack.

Officials said the bus bombing has threatened Egypt’s tourist season,
which focuses on south Sinai as well as Luxor. They said hotel occupancy
rates in the Sinai resort of Sharm e-Sheik dropped from 55 percent
to 48 percent, with the cancellation rate at 20 percent.

NATO states have already taken up Egypt’s offer. In late February,
Britain sent a team of specialists to Sinai to determine whether the
government should announce a complete travel ban. In the end, Britain issued
a ban that excluded Sharm e-Sheik.

“We are hearing from other countries that also want a first-hand look at
the situation,” the official said.

  Egypt invites Western security inspections in bid to save tourist season, Hisham Zazou, Luxor, Sharm-e Sheik, Sinai Peninsula