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| Africa North |
| Gulf Arabs turn to Egypt as tourist destination |
| 2007-09-03 |
| Feeling less welcome in London, Paris or New York, growing numbers of Saudis and other Gulf Arabs prefer the warm reception and relaxed atmosphere of Cairo for their summer holiday. “Everything has changed since September 11, 2001, this is the high season,” says Jean-Pierre Mainardi, manager of the Egyptian capital’s Nile Hilton hotel that provides a temporary home to many Gulf visitors. I wonder why that could be? Why on Earth would they feel any less than welcome? Hotels, furnished apartments, shopping malls, cabarets, everywhere moves “on Arab time,” as Cairenes call it, whether they’re making money from, or being annoyed by, the influx. Almost two million Arabs choose to come here every year, including an unprecedented 400,000 Saudis last year. Nowadays there is little desire to spend holidays in Europe or the US because of the lengthy and invasive visa applications, strict immigration checks and the general feeling many Arabs have of being a suspect after the attacks on the US World Trade Centre and bombings in Europe. Hm. I wonder why that could be? Why do we suspect them? I'm baffled, myself. A family will take six to ten rooms, including one for the maid, for an average of three weeks. For the hotel, this means a summertime occupation rate of over 90 per cent. Others prefer to rent furnished apartments in the upmarket districts of Mohandiseen or Dokki. Six to ten rooms? Jeez, that's a lot. But do they provide special, low-quality rooms for the maid? How do you know if the maid is miserable or not? “Sixty per cent of our clientele comes from the Gulf,” says Maged Abdel Azim, who runs a flat rental agency that charges up to $200 a day for three-bedroom apartments. Some owners however refuse to rent out their properties. These wealthy visitors, who fascinate and exasperate in equal measure, also spend a lot of time in the shopping malls, where the women are easily noticed by their full-length black niqab. |
| Posted by:gromky |
| #8 Careful choice of terminology changes The Dismal Science into The Exciting Science. All a matter of perspective and vocabulary. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-03 23:07 |
| #7 Every woman a whore again? Seen this thread before. Stupid the first time, funny the second, sick the third. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2007-09-03 19:41 |
| #6 with Paris hookers its probably a wash (long way to go for a pun wasn't it) A bit OT : I'm really not hooker-savvy, but I'm led to understand than organized prostitution in Paris is overhelmingly filled with eastern Europe girls, managed by russian, turkish and albanese mobsters, and african girls from Nigeria or subsaharan countries, managed by african mobsters. That is, except perhaps for the african girls or the transvestites from latina america who may be rarer in less "diverse" countries/capitals, the Paris hookers are the exact same girls found all over Europe, including London, I'm not sure their hygiena differs much from country to country; not saying parisian hookers aren't still present, but they've been pushed aside by this industrial prostitution (which is protected from the predation and rackeetering of the Youths, as a sidenote, unlike the traditional hookers), both by violence and through sheer mass. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2007-09-03 13:57 |
| #5 Now, see, this is what I've said before - if those crazy Hamas guys in Gaza got wise they would build resort hotels and get into the tourist business as well. I'm sure they have a nicer climate and cleaner beaches. Oh, I know, swimming at the beach is unIslamic but so are hookers and cabarets. C'mon you guys. Get with it. You may have to settle for killing a few less Joooooos but you can't live on welfare forever, can you? Oh, I guess if you are Palestinians you can. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 2007-09-03 13:44 |
| #4 Gosh, this probably makes up for the lost tourism business from the West and Israel. How nice for Egypt! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-03 13:26 |
| #3 another bad thing about the west, from the point of view of rich gulf Arabs, is that, in the west, some in the middle class resent ostentatious and crass displays of wealth in Cairo such a display of wealth gets a lot of favorable attention; on the downside, the hookers in Cairo probably don't bath as often as they do in, say London ; with Paris hookers its probably a wash (long way to go for a pun wasn't it) |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-09-03 10:18 |
| #2 other Gulf Arabs prefer the warm reception and relaxed atmosphere of Cairo 60C |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-09-03 10:07 |
| #1 other Gulf Arabs prefer the warm reception and relaxed atmosphere of Cairo Sixty gradas centigrades. |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-09-03 10:06 |