Egypt’s Tourism Ministry is launching an advertising campaign in Russia aimed at promoting the Red Sea holidays. The Ministry intends to spend over $3bn on the project, the Director of the tourism department of the Embassy of Egypt in Moscow Nahed Nazmi Ayad Khan told RIA Novosti.

The large-scale Egypt-promoting campaign will hit the Russian television, radio, and shopping malls on April 25, 2011. What is more, we are also planning on coordinating plenty of events in Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada as well as Moscow to support travel there. Among such events are, for example, music festivals,’ the executive explained.

She says that, in addition to investing in advertising, the ministry is going to compensate the expenses to be incurred by tour operators who organize trips to Egypt between March 31, 2011 and October 31, 2011, namely, the Egyptian party will make up for the cost of unsold tickets on chartered flights to Egypt provided that at least 70% of plane seats do get taken.

We intend to catch up with everything we lost in February in March. The Russian market has been Egypt’s No. 1 in terms of importance for several years now, and we are counting on it to stay this way in the year 2011 as well,’ the official said.