Over 11,000 tourists arrive to Egypt's Hurghada

Hurghada International Airport witnessed Thursday the arrival of 11,250 tourists of multiple nationalities onboard 74 planes. Airport manager Samy Abdel-Moneim told state news agency MENA that the airport witnessed an increase in flights Thursday, reaching 148 — 74 of which from international airports, and 10 arriving from domestic Egyptian airports. Hundreds of buses arrived at the airport to transport the tourists to their hotels. In a related development, secretary general of the Chamber of Hotel Facilities in the Red Sea Hatem Mounir stated that occupancy rates in tourist facilities has reached 88 percent, with an increase of three percent since the beginning of this week. According to Mounir, some hotels have occupancy rates as high as 95 percent. Egyptians flocking to Hurghada and other touristic destinations are celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Egypt's tourism sector received several blows since the beginning of this year, the most tragic of which was the highly-publicised hot air balloon accident in Luxor that left 19 tourists dead late January. In June, a report issued by state statistics agency CAPMAS said that Egypt received 1.1 million tourists in April 2013, 5.2 percent more than the one million it received in the same period last year, but still less than April 2010, when 1.2 million visited the country.