One million fewer Britons are visiting Egypt - so why is it doubling the cost of visas?

Egypt is to start charging tourists more than double the amount they currently pay for a visa to enter the country.

The cost of a single-entry visa is to increase from $25 (£20) to $60 (£48) on July 1, 2017, at a time when the country’s tourism sector is still struggling to right itself from a series of setbacks, including the downing of a Russian airliner in 2015. Multiple-entry visas will soon cost $70.

The introduction of the new prices has been delayed at the request of tourist industry leaders, who warned that the higher charges would further hurt the industry.

Philip Breckner, director at the British tour operator Discover Egypt, said he understood why Egyptian authorities felt they had to raise the price but described the move as “not good”.

“A family of four will be paying £200 for visas and they might only be paying £2,000 for the holiday,” he said, ”so that’s 10 per cent of the whole holiday cost.” He said the prices would affect the cheaper holidays more.

The October 2015 plane crash prompted Russia to suspend all air links with Egypt and the British Government to halt flights to Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular Red Sea resort in the Sinai from which the doomed Russian airliner took off.

“UK tourists are still being affected because of the Government decision on Sharm el-Sheikh,” Mr Breckner said. “We don’t know when that will change.”

Travel advice from the Foreign Office remains the same despite a British cross-party taskforce suggesting last September that security at Sharm el-Sheikh had sufficiently improved for the Government to lift its ban on flights.

Sir Gerald Howarth, chairman of the taskforce in charge of strengthening ties between the UK and Egypt, said after a recent visit to the resort's airport: “We thought that they’d put in some pretty sophisticated checks there and we think a lot has been done.”

He said that if the ban was not lifted then the resorts currently operating at 25-35 per cent capacity, thanks to the loss of 900,000 British tourists, might be forced to lay off staff.

While there is still a fall in visitors from the UK and Russia, other countries, such as China, Japan and the Ukraine, are actually visiting Egypt in greater numbers than they did before.

“There are more bookings between October 2016 and January 2017 than last year,” Karim Mohsena, chief of the Egyptian Federation of Tourism, told the AFP news agency a couple of weeks ago.

“There is an increase in the number of tourists,” tourism ministry spokeswoman Omaima al-Husseini agreed. “This situation was much better in January than in previous years”, she added, referring to visitor numbers that plunged from 9.3 million in 2015 to 5.3 million the following year.

The Foreign Office currently advises Britons against all travel to North Sinai, and against all but essential travel to the South Sinai, with the exception of the area within the Sharm el Sheikh perimeter barrier, but crucially also against all but essential travel by air to or from Sharm el-Sheikh.