'City Break' Initiative Will Turn Cairo Into a Long Weekend Hotspot

Cairo is undergoing a transformation into a favored long weekend destination, as revealed by H.E. Ahmed Issa, the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt, at ITB Berlin 2024.

The novel ‘Cairo City Break’ programme is designed to reshape the capital into an enticing long weekend destination, providing visitors with the opportunity to explore numerous tourist and archaeological sites, including those of Pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic significance. This initiative is anticipated to significantly boost the number of tourist nights spent in Cairo, aiming to extend the average duration of visits from three to four days to an impressive 12 days.

“There is no other city that can offer visitors monuments from every great civilization starting from 3500 BC,” Issa shares with CairoScene. “We are dedicated to turning Cairo into a destination that can be enjoyed over the span of multiple visits or a long weekend.”

Egypt's tourism sector is currently undergoing a substantial transformation through deregulation, opening avenues for new investors and reshaping the interaction between the government and the private sector. This underscores a robust commitment to enhancing the country's global tourism standing with an overarching objective to double Egypt's hotel capacity, reaching 60,000 rooms within the next five years.

Additionally, as part of Egypt’s efforts to proactively enhance emerging destinations and improve the overall traveler experience at archaeological sites, the initiative will include the introduction of new destinations and the implementation of faster, environmentally friendly transportation methods to key locations, including Luxor. Notably, in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, a high-speed train will establish a connection between Hurghada and Luxor.

In 2023, Egypt experienced an exceptional surge in tourism, welcoming a record-breaking 14.906 million visitors, a substantial increase from the 4.9 million recorded in 2021. The positive momentum is anticipated to persist in 2024, with an impressive 8% year-on-year growth observed in the first 50 days of the year. The majority of visitors originate from Germany, contributing 1.6 million tourists last year, followed by Russia, Saudi Arabia, Italy and the United Kingdom.