The Column – Market Insights
We know well that there are some economic / demographic trends that have supported the growth in tourism and travel: increase in the world population that can afford to travel, multiplication of air routes and decrease in ticket costs, increase in the average time available to dedicate to leisure, birth of new supply-side products such as charter flights, holiday villages, cruises over time and which today are, for example, experiential travel and, finally, arrival on the market of new destinations (Colombia, Albania, Iceland, Japan, Saudi Arabia to name a few countries where tourism has exploded in the last decade). A sector worth 2100 billion in annual turnover and moving almost 1 billion and 500 million people around the planet (2025 projection relating only to “international” tourists which therefore excludes “domestic” ones).
The continent that attracts the largest number of tourists is Europe with 750mhalf of the world total; as many as 5 countries in the Mediterranean area are in the world Top10 2024 as you can see.
The Mediterranean basin reaches almost 400 million visitors per year between countries that have been tourist destinations for a long time (Italy, France, Spain, Turkey, Croatia), emerging destinations in terms of growth (Greece, Albania, Montenegro) and regions in which massive investments are being made today to make them leaders in tomorrow’s tourism (the Mediterranean coast of Egypt where I am).
The Mediterranean tourism is made up of seaside stays (Antalya 9m visitors in 2024 or Rimini 7.5m are an example), but also of culture (Venice is the most visited city in the Mediterranean with 28m, Athens reaches 5m), of increasingly less remote islands (Santorini “welcomes” over 3m of tourists, Cyprus 4m, a very small archipelago like the Egadi Islands 450,000).
The growth that some countries in the area have had in recent years is truly impressive:
- There Greece doubled the number of tourists in 12 years (20m in 2013, projection of over 40m this year).
- Albania, an almost exclusively domestic destination until 2010, now has 10m foreign tourists who reach the beautiful beaches of the coast.
- In Montenegro, foreign tourists have gone from 1.5m to 2.5m in the last ten years.
In many countries the weight of the sector on the GDP is important: in Croatia it is 19%, in Cyprus, Malta and Greece it is above 10%.
What is the next destination that will have strong growth? In our opinion the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. The country, known touristically for cruises on the Nile, for the Pyramids, for the museums of Cairo (the new Great Egyptian Museum or GEM opens its doors in a few days, on November 4, and promises to be the largest and most spectacular museum in the world) and for the colorful waters of the Red Sea, is developing the coast which from Alexandria in Egypt extends for 500 km westwards to the Libyan border (the North Coast as it is called here).
A spectacular stretch of seaturquoise and very clean since towards the north there is not a soul until Crete and the Turkish coast; bordered by beaches of fine white sand and today well served both on the flight and road sides, with further improvements on the way.
The area saw an initial development of tourism already in the 1990s, but of medium/low quality both in terms of facilities and type of tourists (mainly Eastern European and local) and with few significant changes until 2018, the year in which the Egyptian government began an important development plan on the infrastructure side and new hotels. However, today we are talking about only three thousand rooms available throughout the coast and a few hundred thousand international visitors per year; nothing given the potential.
The real revolution comes now with the Ras El Hekma project which plans to develop 170 square kilometers of coastline near this splendid cape which projects towards the Mediterranean, making it more than just a tourist area: the objective is in fact to create a high-level location where people come to settle even permanently. This is a huge investment of around 150 billion dollars over the next 20 years jointly developed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates with 7 hotels and various other housing solutions. Something similar to what Saudi Arabia is doing with the Red Sea Project on the Red Sea. When fully operational there will also be a new airport.
If you are curious you can go and visit this site which shows ongoing projects https://www.raselhekma.info/. Houses start from 3000 euros per square meter and the good season here lasts almost all year round with the cooler months still having highs around 20 degrees.
