Egypt expects a quick recovery of its vital tourism industry following a series of bombings late April on Egypt's Sinai peninsula, a popular tourist destination, as statistics released on Sunday showed an increase of the number of tourists visiting the country in April despite the terror attacks.

The statistics released by the Egyptian Tourism Ministry showed that the number of tourists visiting Egypt in April jumped by 12.5 percent over March.

A total of 920,683 tourists visited Egypt in April compared to 818,540 in March, the official MENA news agency reported, citing the figures.

During the first four months this year, a total of 3.07 million tourists visited Egypt, up by 5.1 percent over the same period last year, which stood at 2.92 million.

Such rosy statistics seemed to echo earlier predictions by Egyptian officials that the tourism industry would bounce back within weeks regardless of the Sinai bombings.

Five suicide bomb attacks hit the Sinai peninsula in late April- - three rocked the southern Sinai resort of Dahab on April 24 and two occurred at al-Gurah in north Sinai on April 26.

The Dahab bombings killed 20 people, including six foreigners, and injured some 90 others, among them 27 foreigners, while the al- Gurah bombings killed no one but the two bombers themselves.

While many believe April's terror attacks in Sinai are set to deal a blow to Egypt's tourism industry, Egyptian Tourism Minister Zuheir Garana said in early May that the tourism industry would recover in just three weeks.

Garana said in an interview with the London-based Middle East Economic Digest that Egypt's tourism industry was increasingly resilient in defiance of terror attacks, adding that tourism took two years to recover after the 1997 high-profile terror attack in Luxor but only six months to return to normal following the Sharm el-Sheikh blasts last year.

On Nov. 17, 1997, about sixty tourists, including 56 foreigners, were killed by gunmen in the famed southern city of Luxor, some 700 km south of Cairo.

On July 23, 2005, three bomb explosions rocked Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular Red Sea resort located some 85 km south of Dahab, leaving at least 60 people dead, including foreigners.

"This time, the recovery (from the Sinai attacks) is likely to take three weeks," said Garana, adding that only 1-2 percent of existing hotel bookings had been cancelled after the Dahab bombings, which industry analysts said was not considered as a retreat in the travel movement.

"One of the advantages in our tourism development at the moment is that it is all driven by the private sector. We see developers coming in to launch integrated mixed-use developments-- some the size of a new city," said Garana.

In the wake of the Sinai blasts, the Egyptian minister traveled to several oil-rich Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in a bid to woo potential tourists to offset the negative impacts of the terror attacks.

Egypt will exert more efforts through the 18 foreign bureaus of the tourism ministry to attract tourists and nine tourism caravans have been prepared for promotion in Arab countries during the summer tourist season, said Garana.

Tourists and tourism investment from these Arab countries are important for Egypt's plan to further develop the vital sector, Garana added.

Tourism, along with the Suez Canal receipts, remittances from Egyptian expatriates and gas and oil exports, is one of Egypt's four key foreign currency earners.

Despite the Sharm el-Sheikh's bombings, Egypt received 8.6 million tourists in 2005, 6 percent up from 8.1 million in 2004 and tourists spent some US$6.5 billion in 2005, up about 8.3 percent from US$6 billion in 2004, according to figures released by the Egyptian tourism authorities.

Egypt boasted 172,000 hotel rooms in 2005 and 50,000 new rooms are expected to be added on top of that with one million new visitors to come every year, said Garana, adding that 200,000 new jobs would be created a year.

Egyptian tourism analysts and businesspersons have basically shared the bright view with Garana though some said that the minister was a little bit over-optimistic.

Manager of a Cairo-based travel agency said that although the Dahab attacks might have some impacts on the May statistics, the tourism sector was bound to grow in the entire year of 2006.

The average percentage of advance bookings for May, June and July has only fallen slightly since the Sinai attacks, he said on condition of anonymity.

But he cautioned that a quick recovery called for much more work given the sense of insecurity among foreign tourists following the attacks and the fear of the bird flu virus that has claimed five lives in Egypt since the disease's first breakout in the country in February.

(Xinhua News Agency May 15, 2006)