Tourists who were due to participate in an aquatic exercise class, perform their exercises on the sand instead, at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (Photo: Reuters)
Egypt's tourism ministry is to launch a series of precautionary measures to bolster security in Red Sea touristic cities, Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou has said.
Following his meeting with senior security officials from South Sinai governorate, Zaazou considered installing security cameras in Sharm El-Sheik hotels as a deterrent to law breakers in the resort town.
Other measures include issuing official identity cards for employees at hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh and the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada.
Zaazou added that any employee found to be working in one of the towns without the required documents or the ID card issued by Egypt's tourist police would be forced to leave.
The move to tighten security in the tourist towns comes after Germany's second-biggest airline, Air Berlin, said on Monday that it had cancelled flights this month to Sharm El-Sheikh because of deteriorating security conditions for foreign tourists in the Sinai Peninsula.
The suspension will last until April 30, a peak period for Europeans seeking a sunny destination during their Easter vacations.
In March, Egypt’s tourist police arrested a hotel employee accused of raping a British holidaymaker in South Sinai.
According to official data, the number of tourists visiting Egypt in the first two months of 2014 has dropped 28 percent to 1.3 million, in comparison to January and February of last year.
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