I wonder if the Valley of Kings can cope with 4 million visitors a year?Luxor Portal - Tourism: "Tourism:
Tourism is the main investment in Luxor, because the city of Luxor contains one third of the world’s archeological sites as well as being blessed with a temperate climate all year round.
In addition to Luxor’s fame for being home to the greatest civilization to inhabit the earth more than 7 thousand years ago, Luxor is also developing different modes of tourism to fit in with today’s lifestyle, such as conference tourism and sports tourism. Luxor is now hosting a minimum of 10 international conferences a year, as well as several local ones. With the completion of the covered sports arena Luxor will be able to host several international sporting events.
* At present the new airport in Luxor receives 4500 tourists per hour and is able to absorb any increase in tourists up to the year 2018. The train station has been upgraded to receive 5 trainloads of tourists a day, and a network of highways has been established to link the city of Luxor to Cairo, Hurghada ,Aswan and Mersa Alam.
* Medical facilities have been established and existing ones upgraded, as well as state of the art ambulance services on the ground and on the Nile.
* An IMAX theater is currently under construction as well as other entertainment venues.
* Through the Luxor portal on the internet, prospective tourists can now visit many of the historic sites on line, as well as book their hotel rooms and plan their travel itineraries.
* Currently there are 50 tourist hotels, 35 local hotels, 41 restaurants, 177 travel agencies and 180 floating hotels. 18 more hotels are under construction as well as 5 resorts.
* Looking to the future, the ultimate goal is increasing the hotel capacity in Luxor such that within twenty years from today there will be enough rooms to accommodate 4 million tourists a year.
* A new marina is under construction that will alleviate many of the problems of the existing system for docking the floating hotels.
* There are several new areas being developed around Luxor to increase the number of hotel rooms dramatically. One area is south of the Tod Plateau, this lies on 1500 feddans and will have 10,000 rooms upon completion. Another area is east of the railway station that lies on 500 feddans and will have 2000 rooms. A third area being developed is North Zinia and it is 145 feddans.
* Several areas are planned for development on the West Bank, close to Hassan Fathy village and Modira village.
* Another area being developed close to the Avenue of the Sphynx will house 1000 rooms, and this is a joint project between Ain Shams University and Clemson University.
* There are also plans for developing safari tourism, as well as plans for building a new conference center and a new entertainment complex, complete with restaurants and new taxi services and group transportation.
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4500 arrivals an hour at the airport?! Jane we have both stood outside waiting to meet people for the best part of an hour on a Monday evening and I have never seen 4500 arrive in that time. That is probably the busiest hour of the week.
What can you say Barry, the whole thing makes me despair.
Barry - Monday flights seem mainly to be Brits and Spanish - so maybe not representative. At peak times 10-12 movements an hour would fill the numbers published.
Developing Luxor as a tourist resort is madness. It is the surest way to damage the sites irreparably.
The only hope would be to build a replica of Tut's tomb on the East Bank and to move he items from KV62 t0 Luxor from Cairo and try to keep visitors on that side of the Nile, and feel they have seen the cultural highlights. Then add cinemas and swimming pools.
Far, far better though would be to persuade tourists to vist Hurghada or Sharm ... wait ... that isn't really happening because the development of those resorts has already destroyed the character they had.
The problem is that Egypt seems to do tourist development rather badly, like Tunisia or Southern Spain.
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