Wings Group

Dear Friends & Partners

Warm Greetings from Cairo …

We are pleased to share with you the most recent updates from Egypt related to the tourist movements and to the hospitality industry

Cairo as well as most of other Egypt’s provinces are witnessing a sensible stability condition, and had passed a relatively calm couple of weeks with less marches and demonstrations from the side of the political opposition movements, whilst the security authorities of all levels have been attentively alert for dealing with all conditions and situations.

The Red sea coastal resorts, as well as south Sinai continue to receive the European visitors including the Brits, Eastern Europe whom thankfully did not make any travel ban to the Red sea area, and starting from end of September, Charter operations are to be resumed from Germany & Italy and several other European countries which have recently released the travel ban to the Red sea area which was issued during the last couple of months. All roads leading to and from Cairo, Luxor and Aswan are open, and all tourist movements and excursion to and from the Red Sea Coastal resorts are permitted except during the curfew hours.

The ministry of antiquities together with tourism development authority and Egypt air are coordinating together and initiating a positive plan to invest all possible efforts and chances to restart operating tour programs with new promotions based on one day/ one night trips by air between the red sea resort areas and the major tourist attractions in Luxor, Aswan and Cairo, Egypt air is currently studying serious reductions with domestic airfares, the ministry of antiquities offered suggestions for group reductions up to 10% over the entry tickets to all historical sites and museums.

The monks of St. Katherine have decided to reopen the monastery and all its heritage to visitors as of yesterday afternoon, now it is fully operating at its scheduled normal hours as of today.

The minister of transportation announced that the railway authority have invested the time of the last three weeks to work seriously on enhancing the train services through a general maintenance plan, that was pre scheduled a few month ago, he also said that the train movement is ready to come back to normal after the maintenance plan is completed and fulfilled at the soonest possible expectations.

Wings Team – 11 September 2013

When in Cairo, it is basically impossible to miss the Salah El-Din Citadel, one of the world’s greatest monuments to medieval warfare. Resembling a typical early medieval fortress, with large imposing gateways, towers and high defending walls, the Citadel is one of Cairo's main attractions and probably the most popular non-pharaonic monument in the Egyptian capital.

The prominent fortress houses three mosques – of which the impressive Mohamed Ali Mosque – a carriage museum, a military museum, and a garden museum, just to name a few, and they are all worth a visit.
You are even allowed the run of the fortifications and it is worth a try: the views are spectacular from this height.

The citadel is also home to the impressive Gawhara Palace (the Jewel Palace), named after Gawhara Hanem, Mohamed Ali's last wife. Built in 1814, it housed the ruler’s administration and was used as a personal residence by the Egyptian leader. Beautiful gold inscriptions adorn the walls of this majestic Ottoman-influenced palace. One of its most eccentric components is the Watch Hall, where the shape of a watch has been used to decorate the walls.