The travel industry in Egypt is outraged — and the Egyptian tourism minister attempted to resign yesterday — because a former member of the group responsible for the 1997 tourist massacre in Luxor was appointed governor of Luxor last Sunday.
The appointed governor, Adel el-Khayat, was previously associated with Gamaa Islamiya, a militant Islamist group blamed for the massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor at the Temple of Hatshepsut.
In an interview with the Reuters news service, el-Khayat attempted to distance himself from the group’s violent past, saying he would welcome and keep tourists safe.
His words did not satisfy Egypt's tourism minister, Hisham Zaazou, who tendered his resignation on Tuesday to protest the appointment. The prime minister refused to accept the resignation, but tourism workers have been protesting outside the governor’s residence, where el-Khayat has yet to move in.
“Everybody in the travel field here in Egypt is astonished of such an appointment,” Mohamed El Hassanein, chairman and CEO of GalaxiaGroup in Cairo, told Travel Weekly. “And they start manifesting it [demonstrating] in front of the governor’s house in Luxor.”
As for Zaazou’s attempt to resign, El Hassanein said, “All members of our field are supporting the minister in his decision.”
Mohamed Hegazy, tourism attaché with the Egyptian Tourist Authority in New York, said Egypt’s government “accepts all these comments, and the president and prime minister are studying the situation.” He said the government “should come out with word in the next couple of days.”
Hegazy said he didn’t know the background or reasoning behind the el-Khayat appointment and could not predict what steps the government might take in response to the travel industry’s vigorous objections to placing el-Khayat in Luxor. “We need to wait and see,” he said.
Meanwhile, El Hassanein said members of the Egyptian Travel Federation, an organization of five trade groups with 120 members, will convene in Cairo on June 26, at which time, he said, the group will articulate its rejection of al-Khayat’s appointment.