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I think we are all agreed that Egypt has to try and bring back tourist spending power and I for one agree that everything that can be done should be done but of course Egyptians have to pull out the stops and realise they are competing with the rest of the world and offer tourists good value for money and what I saw last night will not do it.
I don't know if you have ever been to the family centre in Maadi.. it is opposite the Japanese embassy. The place is very run down most of the shops are closed and what are open are cheap tacky shops. I have never eaten in the few restaurants that are open simply because they do not look clean. Last night I was waiting outside the picture house when 3 coaches of Japanese tourists were brought along to this place and they duly all went into the centre..immediately more than half came back and went and sat on the coach.. I wasn't around to see when the others returned.
Now as a tourist we all like to have an experience that we wont forget but to be taken along to a run down mall is not what we are thinking about.
There are many great restaurants in Cairo that these tourists could have been taken to.. but they were taken along to somewhere that the tour guides must have been getting a great percentage from.
I don't know if you have ever been to the family centre in Maadi.. it is opposite the Japanese embassy. The place is very run down most of the shops are closed and what are open are cheap tacky shops. I have never eaten in the few restaurants that are open simply because they do not look clean. Last night I was waiting outside the picture house when 3 coaches of Japanese tourists were brought along to this place and they duly all went into the centre..immediately more than half came back and went and sat on the coach.. I wasn't around to see when the others returned.
Now as a tourist we all like to have an experience that we wont forget but to be taken along to a run down mall is not what we are thinking about.
There are many great restaurants in Cairo that these tourists could have been taken to.. but they were taken along to somewhere that the tour guides must have been getting a great percentage from.