Cairo

Tourism

Popular for its warm climate and famous as the home of King Tutankhamun's treasures, Cairo is Egypt's most popular tourist city, and tourism is central to the local economy. Roughly one-third of Egypt's hotels (including three Hilton hotels) are located in the city, and souvenir shops and restaurants cater to travelers and locals alike.

In the 1990s, Egypt's $4.1 billion dollar per year tourist industry was threatened by terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists seeking to overthrow the secular government of Hosni Mubarak. In 1996 terrorists killed 18 members of a Greek tour group as they left a hotel on the outskirts of the city, bound for the Pyramids. The following year, nine German tourists were killed in an assault on a tour bus in front of the Egyptian Museum.

In 1996, visitors to Egypt numbered 3,895,942.