Terrorism and tourism in Egypt

The amount of news coverage a disaster gets and its effects on the tourism industry of that country has been studied by experts like Dr. Gabby Walters from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Persistent terrorism, however, can tarnish a destination's image of safety and attractiveness and jeopardize its entire tourism industry.

On 8 June 1993, a bomb lobbed at a tour bus in Giza's Pyramid Rock, killed foreign tourists and Egyptians.

[19] In 1996, 18 Greek tourists who had finished touring Jerusalem and were in Egypt, near the Europa Hotel in Cairo, were killed and security nearby were not prepared (armed) to protect them.

Hotels eliminated 70% of their workforce and "...European and Japanese tourism companies canceled their tours to Egypt" after the attack.

[21] In 2014 an Egyptian citizen from Upper Egypt lamented that what had "provided one of the most important sources of income besides farming has dried out".

The explosion was caught on camera when on 16 February 2014, four civilians including three South Korean tourists were killed in what is known as the 2014 Taba bus bombing.

[25][26] The bomber detonated his device on a tour bus carrying more than 30 members of a South Korean church group.

[28] By 2015, conditions had deteriorated to the point where Israeli tourists stopped going to the area for 18 months then resumed their visits, under heavy security in 2017.

[29] When tourism was recovering, the downing of an airplane which had left Sharm El Sheikh airport, with Russian tourists on 31 October 2015, sent shock waves through the industry again.

Russia stopped all flights to Sharm-El-Sheik, until Russian officials inspected the airport and felt it met sufficient security standards.

[30][31] After the downing of the jet, "scared tourists" left the area, affecting the Bedouin population who worked in the tourism industry.

[37] On 19 September 2008, tourists were held hostage by a number of men who took them into the Western desert and demanded ransom money.