In a poll titled “Travel World Cup”, which was posted by British newspaper The Telegraph, comparing World Cup groups as travel destinations, Egypt came as the voters’ most popular travel destination within group A, surprisingly taking over Russia and Uruguay and less surprisingly taking over Saudi Arabia.
Telegraph Travel posted a tweet on 14 June asking twitter users “Which of the Group A teams is your favourite holiday destination?” Out of 880 votes, Egypt won 37 percent of the quota, followed by Uruguay, which earned 33 percent of the votes and Russia which came in third, winning 17 percent of the votes. And finally, Saudi Arabia which is at the end of the list with only 11 percent of the votes.
The result comes after a tough period for Egyptian tourism. Since the Arab Spring in 2011, Egypt’s tourism took a sharp decline.The number of tourists plummeted from 14 million tourists in 2010 to 9 million by the end of 2011. The decline continued as 2014 witnessed yet another low for Egyptian tourism. The number of tourists in 2014 were 25 percent less than the number of tourists who visited Egypt during the same period in 2013.
