EU – Baltic States, Tourism

Southern part of Sinai, to be exact, Sharm El Sheikh has become recently quite a familiar destination for tourists from the Baltics. And there are numerous reasons for that: in November-December the sun is not that that hot, though the sea is still warm –it’s never below 20-21 degrees Celsius. The resort is both familiar to leaders of the Arab world and numerous tourists from other countries.

Sharm El Sheikh on the coast of the Red Sea offers remarkable historical, cultural and aquatic scenes. At all seasons, it provides optimal conditions for water sports, mountain hiking and relaxing on sandy beaches with palm trees under a clear sky.    

Tourism diversity

Egyptian tourism survived the crisis: the visitors’ level, I was told in local tourism agency, even increase in 2010; it gives the country about 20 percent foreign currencies. Good trend in local hotels – and tourist industry as a whole- is not only relying on sun-starved Scandinavians and people from the Baltics and Russia, but diversifying the whole industry. And Southern Sinai is quite good at it: present services includes golf, snorkeling, spas, numerous mount-trips and adventures. Besides, the government created this year a National Training Council for the tourism sector in order to speed up the service sector. It seems that Sharm El Sheikh is filly equipped to face new tourism challenges.

Tourism at a time of crisis

There are more and more people anxious to “prolong” summer into winter, to taste exotic fruits and vegetables, explore diving facilities and visit historic places, like the monastery of St. Katherine (the oldest Christian monastery) or Moses mountain, to name a few. However, Scandinavians are still the major share of tourist (about 60-80 percent), people from the three Baltic States, Poland as well as Ukraine – and of course, Russia- are frequent visitors too (about 20-40 percent, depending on the season). And their share is constantly growing. To say the least, the “Baltic course” is quite visible even at the Sinai’s “sunny side”.

Statistically, tourists in Sharm El Sheikh are divided into two big categories. One, to which all reach people still belong, they settle down in hotels like Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, with often “all inclusive” arrangements. These are 4-5 “stars” hotels, generally on the beach; soft sand beaches in Sharm El Sheikh region stretches for about 35 km.

The second category, are those of lower-rank hotels, though quite nice and comfortable, but less expensive. They are quite a distance from the beach, though hotels arrange return buss trips in the morning and afternoon.

There is, in fact a third category of tourists, for guests settling in the so-called “unspecified hotels”, the hotels that are comparatively cheaper, though not necessarily uncomfortable. In one of which I, actually spent a week following a nice recommendation from Falk Lauritsen, a Danish Travel Agency. It was Regency & Lodge Hotel (Ihab El Sayed, director, hotel’s website: www/regencysharm.tk), the 3-star category hotel; he said that it’s better to provide 4-star service in a 3-star hotel, than the other way around: there are more chances that guests would most certainly return back again.

There are 88 rooms in the hotel, mostly are “doubles” only 13 “singles”. There are 3 big swimming pools, which was a great advantage, when suddenly the beaches were closed (due to unexpected shark attacks in the region of coral reefs in the north). 

Almost in all shops, restaurants, cafes and hotels euros and dollars are accepted (calculating in dollars, one divide Egyptian Pounds, approximately, into 5 and euro- into7,5). Though quite often is more comfortable to change some dollars/euros into pound to buy soft drinks and mineral water.

Baltic guests

Guests from the Baltic region, as well as those from Russia and Ukraine, use various options for travel available in these countries. Thus, Latvian tourists could get two-week’s tour from Riga (direct flight) for 364 LVL (which is about 3700 DKr), though without breakfast and dinner. Russians could buy an 11-nights’ trip for 700 dollars with “all inclusive”. From Copenhagen, “unspecified” tour would cost about 2500 Dkr.  

Estonians would get a week’s tour (with breakfast and dinner) in 3-stars hotel for 600 dollars, though in 5-stars hotel with “all inclusive” would cost about a thousand “bucks”. Mrs. Thea, a retired clerk from Tallinn told me that she liked the place so much that she came to Sharm El Sheikh for the 6^th time. “It’s not that cheap, she added, as last year when the prices were completely down; but even now I can afford the trip only having an additional job”.

There are numerous tourist companies that assist anxious people to change winter for summer:

Ving serving Sweden and Norway, Intourist –for Russian tourists (as well as Pegas, which services tourists from the former Soviet republics), Apollo for Norway, Denmark and Sweden, Atlantis Rejser – for all Scandinavian/Nordic states and finally, Falk Lauritsen – for Danish and Swedish tourists. 

It seems, an interesting trend has appeared among Russian and the Baltics’ tourists (as well as some Scandinavians) during early December winter tours. After having booked the Sharm El Sheikh tour, they changed the return flight into one with am intermediate stop in Copenhagen for “Christmas shopping”. Some even prefer to stay a couple of days…