#ThisIsEgypt: New promotional campaign to increase inbound traffic over next three years

Egypt will launch a tourism promotional campaign at the World Travel Market in London in early November, Minister of Tourism Hisham Zaazou told Daily News Egypt. The campaign aims to incease inbound tourism traffic over the next three years.

Around 6.6 million tourists visited Egypt in the first eight months of 2015, ringing in revenues of $4.6 billion, a 5 percent increase compared to the same period last year. 

Zaazou told Reuters in September that the total number of inbound tourists for 2015 is expected to be around 10 million with receipts to range between $7.5-8 billion. Tourism receipts in 2010, before the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, was $12.5 billion. 

Egypt's promotional campaign is led by J. Walter Thompson, which won the bid worth $68 million in August. Its mandate is to promote Egyptian tourism in 27 foreign markets over the next three years. 

JWT started the #ThisIsEgypt social media campaign aimed at showing the 'real image' of Egypt and dispelling negative perceptions of the country as unstable and unsafe. Last week it roped in American actor Morgan Freeman to launch the hashtag campaign with Minister Zaazou at the pyramids in Giza. 

The hashtag campaign has generated 26,000 tweets this month, as measured by social media analytics service hashtracking.com.