On January 11th, a study was released that showed Egypt in a positive light along with Panama and Brazil as being three of the up and coming mega property markets for the year. Just four days later on January 16th, a wholly different study was released that mentioned Egypt along with India as being promising developing markets.
Now, some good news from a different sector might mean that the development of the Egyptian property market will accelerate to a pace that will have overseas property investors salivating just at the prospect of it happening.
This news comes from the tourism sector, which has stated that a combination of new hospitality services, international cooperation agreements and staff development efforts has resulted in an ultra healthy Egyptian tourism economy that is only going to get stronger as the year goes on.
In fact, the Egyptian tourism industry saw double-digit increases in the number of tourists who came through the country from 2006 to 2007, and it is expected that such an increase will continue into 2008. A recent decision by the Egyptian government to copyright Egyptian national treasures (i.e. the pyramids and the sphinx) in order to raise additional funds has also provided the Egyptian government with some much needed capital to expand the hospitality to the level needed to contain the extra tourists. Already, over 300,000 different hotel rooms have been earmarked for construction in 2008.
With a tourism economy that is rapidly developing alongside a strong property market that is one of the international hopes of the future, Egypt is very quickly elevating itself from a mere point of interest in the broader scope of international property to one of the markets that investors need to take a closer look at. If things stay on this course, look for Egypt to appear even more in the news in 2008 as rapid development of property and economy starts to have rapid effects in the country.
