As Egypt opened its museums and archaeological sites to tourists for free on Tuesday to mark World Tourism Day, the country’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics announced that around 4.9 million tourists visited Egypt in the first half of 2022, an 85.4% increase compared to the same period last year. Hotel occupancy also grew in 2022, though not as much; during the first six months of 2022, it was 52.6 million nights, a 63.6% increase compared to the first half of 2021. In all of 2021, 8 million tourists visited Egypt, a 117.5% increase over 2020, when 3.7 million people visited the country.
Before the pandemic, tourism was breaking records in Egypt: Revenue from tourism hit a peak in 2019 at $13.03 billion, with 13.1 million people arriving that year as tourists.