Stay: Kempinski Hotel Soma Bay
A good 45 kilometers from Hurghada airport and 500 km from Cairo you find Soma bay. Best described as a peninsula with sandy beaches and spectacular sunset, it is known as the pearl of the Red Sea. I was lucky enough to get to stay 2 nights in the first Kempinski property in Egypt. Unfortunately due to some stomach bug I did not get to experience the area around Soma Bay. But this is an exclusive holiday resort lined up with luxury resorts. This is a mekka for golf, dive and kiting.
Egypt.travel did put us up at some great hotels during this week in Egypt and I was looking forward to be staying at Kempinski as I have read that this is a great hotel chain. They did not disappoint at all. Set in a lovely location with a wonderful beach. I can really recommend a drink to the sunset at the beach bar.
We got greeted by the lifeguard at the beach, welcoming us and wondered where we were from. As we told him we were from Norway he got even more excited. He could tell us that he had not seen any scandinavians at this part of Egypt in three years, missing them and wanted them to come back to the resort.
Egyptian tourism have really taken a heavy fall since the egyptian revolution. This fall most scandinavian countries are taken Egypt on board again (except Norway) and hope to see the numbers slowly rising again. In 2010 the scandinavian numbers was a sky high for Egypt about 5 million tourists came to the country. After the revolution the scandinavian tourism plummeted with close to 75%.
This of course has a big impact on Egypt´s economy. They are now seeing the result of a longer period of slow tourism. 4 million Egyptian people depend and work in the travel industry. They have family that depend on them and together this means that more that 16 million people are affected from todays tourism. As part of raising awareness of Egypt the government have now open up to hollywood production. Tom Hanks new production have been partly filmed around the red sea and Hurghada area.
Back to the lifeguard that couldn’t do to enough for us. Hoping we could raise awareness to the fact that Egypt is a safe country to travel in and we are most welcome. The hospitality of the Egyptian are enormous, smiling, making conversations and making sure we have everything we ever need.
