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The campaign targeted people in Russia and enabled them to explore the attractions that Egypt can offer, AdColony has said on its LinkedIn account.

Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities launched the campaign to promote the Egyptian tourist destination in the Russian market during the past two months, coinciding with the resumption of the Russian tourism movement to Egyptian tourist resorts after a hiatus of nearly six years, the ministry statement said.

In April 2018, Russia resumed flights to Cairo International Airport, ending a 30-month suspension, but the Egyptian Red Sea resorts have only started to receive flights coming from Moscow since August as per Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree.

This came after nearly six years when Russia decided in October 2015 to suspend direct flights to Egyptian airports following the crash of a Russian flight in Sinai that killed all 224 people on board.

Lamia Kamel, assistant tourism minister for marketing and promotion, stated that Egypt is the only country that received this evaluation this year, noting that the campaign lasted for four weeks and has achieved great success and unprecedented numbers on various social networking platforms.

The promotional campaign has been viewed nearly 12 million times on YouTube, 5 million on Facebook and received more than 1 million interactions on Facebook, which is nine times more than the expected interaction rates, the statement quoted Kamel as saying.

Prior to the long flight suspension, Egypt was for long a favoured destination for Russian tourists. By 2014, Russia was dominating Egypt’s tourism market, especially in the Red Sea resorts, with the number of Russian tourists surpassing 3.1 million that year.

In the first half of 2021, Egypt received 3.5 million tourists who brought in revenues of between $3.5 and $4 billion, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Before the pandemic started in early 2020, Egypt’s tourism revenues drastically improved, recording $13 billion in 2019.