Bourdain soaks up the views in Leptis Magna, some of the most intact ruins of the Roman Empire.

If Quebec was Bourdain’s most gluttonous episode to date, Libya is its most austere.

Geopolitics and Libyan culture are the snippets that viewers and Bourdain feast on in this week’s episode; and images of Libyan children offering the peace sign serve as a decadent dessert.

Bourdain calls episode 6 of Parts Unknown “the best piece of work I’ve ever been part of,” something at least several viewers will agree with.

The foray into Parts Unknown’s most dangerous destination begins with newsreels of the Libyan uprising in 2011. Newscasters’ announcements are interwined with Bourdain’s explanation of the revolution and the role that social media played in its success.

“They recorded the whole thing on their cell phones… young people heeded the calls for revolution on Facebook and Twitter,” describes Bourdain.

Akram, a Libyan local that flew home from Manchester at the first word of revolution attributes Twitter and Google Earth to the movement’s success.

Over a breakfast of fried bread and eggs, Akram tells Bourdain, “How did it happen? Easy. Twitter.”

Solidarity

For one moment it seems like Bourdain and crew plan to show just one happy side of Tripoli. They arrive just in time for a firework celebration in honor of Prophet Mohamed’s birthday, a holiday that one local describes as “…Christmas, the Fourth of July, all rolled into one.”

That local is Michel Cousins, the co-founder of the English-language paper the Libya Herald, who Bourdain meets in a traditional male-only coffee house. Cousins is described as having seen many faces of Libya’s past, but he refutes fears that its future will like look anything like its neighbors.

“The biggest misconception is that the place is turning into another Afghanistan and Iraq where bombs go off, attacks, but it’s not. Libyans have gone through an awful time, people have died, people have struggled, and that’s going to hold them together.”

A similar sentiment is described by Omar, a travel agent and medical student turned fighter. The first-hand account of Omar’s revelation that the groups’ goal of overthrowing Gaddafi was indeed possible is heard over a meal of grilled freshly caught fish at a seaside restaurant.

Barakoda is just one of the first images of Libya’s impressive coast line on the Mediterranean where any entrepreneuring hotelier would dream of rows of resorts that would easily fill with tourists if not for the country’s instability. The vast opportunities for tourism are seen throughout the hour, most notably in Leptis Magna, the gorgeous and empty Roman ruins.

Obstacles ahead

Bourdain; however, does quickly dive into the struggles that still lie heavy on the country’s people. Men and women’s traditional roles have remain unchanged, the British Foreign Office orders all UK citizens to leave Benghazi early in Bourdain’s stay, and the ZPZ film crew of Westerners is regarded with apprehension.

Viewers get a very real look into what it must have been like taping the episode when the crew is forced out of Gaddafi’s old palace after a militia group tells them to delete what footage they have of the destroyed grounds.

So proud of my co-workers and friends at ZPZ for tonight’s Libya show. It was very, very difficult. But worth it.

— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) May 20, 2013

The important point that Parts Unknown makes is that, despite what foreigners are called out of the country or what local threats exist, locals that live in Tripoli still go about their daily lives.

“If you only look at what’s on the news, you miss, maybe, what’s a bigger picture,” Bourdain surmises.

As much is proven in the Libyan version of KFC, Uncle Ketaki, where the crew talks with Johan, another young Libyan that quickly answered the call for revolution.

“That’s why we give it a lot of blood from my country,” Johan says while pointing to a Uncle Kentaki chicken sandwich, “because I want the feeling that the taste of freedom.”

Freedom can be as simple as a fast food sandwich.

Lasting impact

It is in Misrata that viewers see the most obvious impact of the fighting with bullet holes covering every wall, and where it becomes most apparent that this episode is not a culinary tour of Libya, but a tribute to those that fought in the revolution.

In the Misrata War Museum, the camera pauses on faces of those that were killed in the uprising, giving international attention and honor to those people that fought for change.

As Bourdain relaxes with a group of ex-freedom fights and a picnic lunch of stew, which includes the heart and kidneys of a lamb killed just moments before, he boils down freedom to its most essential ingredients. “…the freedom to enjoy an afternoon that no one thought possible only a little while ago, the freedom at least to joke, to laugh, to be relatively carefree. ”

In Libya, he has unveiled more evidence that supports an opinion formed by his very unique world view: “Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.”

Psyched for tonight’s Libya episode of @partsunknowncnn . Our best EVER. Will actually be able to watch a bit of it before gotta go… 9EST

— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) May 20, 2013

The post Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” episode 6 recap: Peace signs in Libya appeared first on Skift.

Habib Bourguiba Mausoleum in Tunis, Tunisia. / Flickr

Sidi Bou Said’s signature blue-and-white houses are framed with sweet-smelling jasmine and bougainvillea. The soft sunshine is making them seem so picture-perfect it’s hard to associate this with tanks and barbed wire. A short cab ride away from the Tunisian capital, this coastal hilltop town is full of steep cobbled streets, beautiful buildings and lazy cafés. It captures the appeal of a Tunis minibreak – stunning, stylish and seemingly undiscovered. But yes, there is the odd army tank in Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s central artery, and rolls of razor wire close off parts of the street next to the interior ministry and the French embassy.

Political tensions have been running high recently: a political assassination in March; two deaths at an attacked US embassy late last year; flashes of ultra-religious violence in the country that started the Arab spring in January 2011. But some of the coverage of this North African country has lately swung into the hysterical – in fact there is mostly calm on the capital’s streets and a welcome reception for anyone who chooses to go beyond the scary headlines and actually visit.

Tunisians are keen to get their tourism industry running again – visitors dropped from 7 million in the year before the revolution to 3 million in the years after. Tourism has mostly been of the package, beach-resort variety along the country’s sun-dappled Mediterranean coast, but the capital, Tunis, deserves to be a destination in its own right. With its satellite beach towns – such as the lovely Sidi Bou Said and the tranquil, upmarket La Marsa – and its Unesco World Heritage medieval medina lodged alongside more modern attractions, Tunis is ideal for curious travellers.

The city’s striking architecture – like the language, an intriguing juxtaposition of French colonial and Arabic – is best viewed at a slow stroll, with frequent pit stops for coffees and pastries. The stunning detailing of all these period buildings – hypnotising floor tiles, wrought-iron balconies, ornate, bold blue doors and extravagant Ottoman features – needs time to sink in. And nobody would hurry a faux-melodramatic haggle with the medina’s pottery, textile and jewellery traders.

This slower speed will give you time for another Tunis attraction: the street food. Two unmissables are ojja, a harissa-laden tomato stew with added meat of your choice (chicken or merguez sausage being favourites), and lablabi, a spicy, brothy chickpea soup served over baguette pieces with a raw egg stirred into your steaming, traditional-pottery bowl to cook. Don’t peer too closely into the giant soup pot (there may, for instance, be cow’s hooves in there) and don’t take offence if the person ladling the broth over your bread is picky about the way you crumbled it into your bowl – this is to ensure your dish is at its best consistency.

Locals carefully rate the street food joints. One ojja stall in Tunis’s central market (in the meat-district street selling rabbits and chickens, I was told) currently holds top rank. Also highly rated is the packed and chaotically efficient Chez Chouchou in downtown Tunis (Rue Borj Bourguiba), where each order is made on the spot in front of you.

But if street isn’t your preferred style (you want to eat while seated, say, or to use something other than bread as cutlery), there are plenty of restaurants to choose from. Staunch favourites include Chez Slah (14 bis rue Pierre de Coubertin), a family-run restaurant known for serving the best fish in town, and Dar el Jeld (dareljeld.tourism.tn) in the medina, an 18th-century palace serving high-quality traditional Tunisian cuisine.

Meanwhile new ventures in small, home-grown cafés have sprung up since the revolution, part of a trickle of start-ups hoping to grow Tunisia’s hospitality industry from the ground up. These include the brand-new Cook’s in Sidi Bou Said (facebook.com/cooksfood), which does innovative seasonal salads alongside perennial pastries, and Lyoum in nearby La Marsa (facebook.com/lyoumconcept) – lunch menus are based on what’s available locally, and it also does a line in kids’ clothing, also made locally.

Ethnic-meets-modern is the theme of the city’s boutique hotels. Dar el Medina (darelmedina.com, from $205), one such hotel de charme in the old city, is a beautifully furnished Ottoman, multilevel building full of tiled floors and elegant terraces, with period furnishings alongside contemporary paintings and latticed windows. There are more boutique hotels in Sidi Bou Said, with Dar Said (darsaid.com.tn, €190), Villa Didon (villadidoncarthage.com/en, from €235) and Dar Fatma (darfatma.com, €96) getting gold stars.

There are no current UK travel warnings to Tunisia, but you are advised to stay alert to political events that might have an impact on western tourists. Also be ready for conversations with helpful Tunisians, mostly about what you think of their capital – and whether you’ll return.

Essentials

British Airways (ba.com) flies London to Tunis from £83 one way. For more travel tips, go to guardian.co.uk/travel/tunisia

The post Travel in Tunisia: Separating the headlines from reality appeared first on Skift.

Egyptian day laborers wait for employers at a street in Cairo, Egypt. Egypt has been increasingly knocking on doors around the world seeking billions to fill rapidly draining coffers. Nasser Nasser / Associated Press

Egypt is suffering its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a former finance minister of the country and one of its leading economists have warned.

In terms of its devastating effect on Egypt’s poorest, the country’s current economic predicament is at its most dire since the 1930s, Galal Amin, professor of economics at the American University in Cairo, and Samir Radwan, finance minister in the months after Egypt’s 2011 uprising, said in separate interviews with the Guardian.

Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egypt has experienced a drastic fall in both foreign investment and tourism revenues, followed by a 60% drop in foreign exchange reserves, a 3% drop in growth, and a rapid devaluation of the Egyptian pound. All this has led to mushrooming food prices, ballooning unemployment and a shortage of fuel and cooking gas – causing Egypt’s worst crisis, said Amin, “without fear of making a mistake, since the 30s”.

“Nobody cares about the poor now,” Amin said. During comparable crises in the late 1960s, the mid-70s and the late 80s, Amin and Radwan argued that Egypt’s poorest were variously shielded from absolute hardship either by state subsidies, overseas aid, comparatively low unemployment, or by remittances from expatriates in the Gulf states. But now one in four young Egyptians is unemployed, household remittances are low, and there is a shortage of subsidised goods.

“You are talking about nearly half of the population being in a state of poverty,” said Radwan, a development economist. “Either in absolute poverty or near-poor, meaning that with any [economic] shock, like with inflation, they will fall under the poverty line.” Currently, 25.2% of Egyptians are below the poverty line, with 23.7% hovering just above it, according to figures supplied by the Egyptian government.

For most Egyptians, rising food prices are the most critical problem. Some goods have doubled in price since last autumn – catastrophic for the quarter of families that already spend 50% of their income on food.

For Hoda Goma, a Cairo architect, the situation is having a serious effect on her two eight-year-old sons. “They’re getting worse at school,” she said. “They’re getting ill more often. They have these black patches under their eyes and their teeth have got worse.”

It is down to their diet, Goma explained. She cannot afford to feed them what they need. Six months ago she spent half her salary on food. Now she says it is closer to four-fifths – not because she is earning less, but because rising food prices show no sign of slowing down.

“Prices are on fire,” said grocer Walid Ali. Just last week, Ali would buy a kilo of mandarins for four Egyptian pounds – or 40 British pence – from wholesalers, and sell them for six (60 British pence). “Now I buy them for six and sell them for eight.”

As a result, consumers are either buying less, or not buying at all. “It’s impossible,” said Ali. “I’ve lost half my customers. People can only afford to buy basic foods.” At his two-storey market in central Cairo, the top floor is now entirely empty. Neighbours said all stall-holders on the upper level had been forced to close in recent months.

Inflated food prices are not a new phenomenon in a country that is the world’s biggest importer of wheat, where the population has long risen more rapidly than production, and where up to half of the produce rots in the heat on the way to market. But the recent rate of inflation has been significantly raised by Egypt’s disastrous economic predicament.

Most problematically, the value of the Egyptian pound has fallen by 12% against the dollar since December. For two years, Egypt’s central bank had used its foreign currency reserves to arrest the slide – but with those reserves having shrunk by around 60% since 2011, the bank had to abandon the tactic last winter. As a result, the pound’s value has this year fallen further and faster. In turn, it has become much more expensive to import foreign goods – catastrophic for a country that buys in 60% of its wheat, and whose farmers also often rely on imported fertiliser, fuel and animal feed.

“They have a serious crisis on their hands,” said the EU’s envoy to Egypt, James Moran, who noted that Egypt’s foreign reserves had fallen from $36bn (£24bn) three years ago to $14.4bn last month. “This gives you less than three months’ import coverage – and in an import-dependent economy, this is quite dangerous.”

“We are suffering,” said Ali Eissa, the chairman of Nahdet Misr, a farm company which grows potatoes and oranges on 3,000 acres across Egypt. “It’s impacted most of our fertilisers, machines, tractors – all their prices have dramatically increased.”

The pound’s devaluation has also made it harder for the Egyptian government to import fuel. The state has subsidised diesel (along with goods such as bread, cooking gas and fertiliser) since the dictatorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser. But with those subsidies now accounting for over a fifth of the Egyptian budget, and with a budget deficit of 13%, the state cannot afford to support the population at the level it once did. As a result, there are daily shortages at pumps across Egypt, long queues – and, at times, fatal fights.

“Last month, we couldn’t find any diesel,” said Eissa, who was consequently forced to turn to the black market, where he says fuel prices are between 40% and 80% higher than their legal rate. “The worst thing is that most of the black market quantities are mixed with water – which is breaking a lot of our machines. We have to change the filter, get them maintained, stop the irrigation, stop the tractors.”

In turn, farmers must sell their crops for higher prices – and with the government also under pressure to cut subsidies, food is therefore increasingly unaffordable for the poorest Egyptians. “The rich can take care of themselves,” said Karim Abadir, professor of econometrics at Imperial College London, and a co-founder of the Free Egyptians, an opposition party. “But the poor of Egypt are really, really poor. Their daily diet is just bread. First of all, that’s a terrible diet. Secondly, they’re not even going to afford that. And the government has nothing in place to provide them with a safety net when they have to raise prices and cut subsidies.”

So far, Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist-led government has attempted to keep Egypt afloat with short-term measures. It has accepted loans and grants worth more than $5bn from Gulf states such as Qatar, and interest-free fuel handouts from neighbouring Libya. Domestically, it has avoided major economic reforms that might cause short-term upheaval – perhaps fearing bread riots similar to those experienced in 1977, when the then dictator Anwar Sadat first temporarily tinkered with subsidies. Instead, Morsi has focused mainly on meaningless initiatives such as tax rises on peripheral imports such as shrimp and nuts, or closing shops early at night to save electricity. Morsi has also attempted to legalise the controversial sukuk, an Islamist form of government bond that may help to bring in more short-term cash.

“There is no vision, there is no vision whatsoever,” said Radwan of the government’s current economic ministers. The Egyptian finance ministry did not make any official available for interview.

Along with Amin, Radwan said the initial route out of the crisis was obvious. The government needed to take the lead in restoring calm to the polarised Egyptian street and its tumultuous political sphere. National stability would give investors the confidence to reopen the 1,500 factories that have closed since 2011, and encourage tourists – whose spending was once worth $1bn a month to the Egyptian economy – to return.

“Restore stability, restore tourism, and restore confidence from investors,” summarised Amin. Such a process would raise employment, and so lift millions from poverty, gradually allowing the government to end food subsidies for those who would no longer need them.

“It has to be spread over a period of time otherwise the social consequences would be very dire,” said Amin. “As you succeed in raising the income of the poor, you [can] reduce the subsidy.”

The delivery of a much-delayed $4.8bn International Monetary Fund loan – and a further $12bn in contingent loans from the EU and elsewhere – depends on Egypt’s agreement to such reforms. Without the loan, foreign investment – which has fallen by 56% since 2011 – is also unlikely to return.

Radwan said: “I regard the IMF loan, which I was the first to negotiate, and it was turned down, as the key. Not because of the sum. But because if you sign with the IMF, it means you have a sound financial and monetary programme to get you out of the crisis.”

Not everyone agrees. Amin sees the loan as too small to make much difference in itself. Instead, he suggests Egypt should enact the reforms the IMF suggests without taking on the debt itself. “What is the use of this $4.8bn sum?” Amin asked. “It is a big sum, but it still less than what tourism used to bring you. The conclusion is that the loan from the IMF is neither necessary nor sufficient. Not necessary because by attacking the real problems, you can dispense with it – and not sufficient, because if you don’t attack the real problems it doesn’t help you very much. It’s only short-term relief.”

Whatever happens, while politicians prevaricate, ordinary Egyptians are being ever more compromised by the soaring cost of living. Mostafa, a 30-year-old driver, started dealing hashish late last year when his wife became pregnant, realising his monthly earnings of 1,500 Egyptian pounds, or £150, would not be enough to feed his enlarged family. “Without the drug dealing, I would only have 300 Egyptian pounds [£30] to pay for everything after rent and food,” Mostafa said. “How would I be able to support my new children?”

Economists often predict a so-called “revolution of the hungry”, should conditions worsen further. But for Radwan, Egypt is already at that stage: robbery rose 350% in 2012 as Egyptians took wealth redistribution into their own hands. “The elite sits there saying the revolt of the hungry is coming,” said Radwan. “What do you mean it’s coming? Are you waiting for a violent, bloody destruction of the Bastille? It’s already there.”

Additional reporting by Mowaffaq Safadi

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

The post Egypt’s economy in a tailspin as tourism & investment dries up appeared first on Skift.

The officer, who had spent more than a year training with U.S. Navy SEALs, quit last year to set up Firewall Security Consultants. Clients include Paris-based cement maker Lafarge SA, which equips vehicles with Firewall’s cameras, he said, adding he’s also in talks with U.S. companies. His khaki-suited guards, all former paratroopers and commandos, also secure hotels such as the Fairmont Nile City.

Private security is one of the few growth markets in a country where revolution was followed by the deepest economic slump for two decades, and a crime wave. Leaders haven’t been spared: cars carrying the prime minister and central bank chief were attacked.

“Before the revolution, we had to convince companies of the need for security, now we get a lot of requests,” said Ahmed Emam, Egypt president for Swedish security firm Securitas AB, who lists Europe’s biggest builder Vinci SA, part of a consortium extending Cairo’s metro lines, among clients. “We’re negotiating for 20 new contracts and getting a lot of individual requests for bodyguard services.”

Protest hotspots

The metro was targeted last year by armed robbers seeking copper cables. It’s vulnerable because stations are near protest hot-spots such as Tahrir Square. Plain-clothes guards are sometimes sent to gather intelligence ahead of planned protests, according to a security adviser to Vinci, who asked not to be identified as the operations are politically sensitive.

Securitas, the world’s second-biggest guarding services company, targets a 33 percent increase in Egypt revenue this year to as much as 40 million pounds, Emam said. G4S Plc, the world’s largest security company, cited a “double-digit” jump in revenue from Egypt last year.

An explosion of violence at the Nile City Towers in August helped Firewall win a contract, and illustrated the strains on security in Egypt. The skyscrapers back onto a slum, whose residents demanded payment for what they say was an informal agreement to provide protection during the uprising. When a crowd stormed the Cairo complex seeking money 32-year-old Amr al-Bunni was shot dead by a tourism police officer. After that, Firewall guards were installed at 6,000 Egyptian pounds ($865) a month each, triple the average family income.

Police strikes

Protests and clashes involving political groups, religious believers and soccer fans, as well as the spread of crime, have tested Egypt’s ability to enforce the law since the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Critics blame his successor, Mohamed Mursi, elected in June, for failing to restore stability. Police officers are dissatisfied too. Hundreds went on strike this year in part to protest what they said was a lack of adequate equipment.

Fear is helping security companies make “billions of pounds a month,” said Adel Soliman, executive manager of the Cairo-based International Center for Future and Strategic Studies. “There is no building, small or large, that doesn’t have private security, even supermarkets. And whoever didn’t have it before, has it now.”

Protections squads

Nile City Investments is setting up its own protection squad and plans to complement that with a detachment of guards provided by the Interior Ministry, for which the company will pay, according to a December stock exchange filing. They will help protect the Nile City Towers, two office blocks whose clients include the World Bank’s International Finance Corp.

“It took four months to get the approval from the Interior Ministry’s department of guards for important buildings, because there’s a shortage of police with all the security incidents,” said Tarek El Halawany, security manager at the company.

Under the proposed accord, guards will be located outside the towers and the adjacent Fairmont, along with the complex’s own security personnel and Firewall guards, El Halawany said. Mohamed El Nady, head of the media department at the ministry in Cairo, said by phone that he wasn’t aware of such an agreement.

Not everybody can afford protection, even when they see the need.

Kidnapping risk

Ragab Al-Attar, a wholesaler of spices, oversees 5,000 traders in Cairo and says they risk death, kidnapping and theft. When one of them goes from Aswan to Cairo, or any part of the country, “there’s a chance he won’t make it,” El-Attar said.

Traders have been kidnapped from their homes and held for ransom. Still, El-Attar said he can’t afford to hire more guards because his business is suffering.

“If I used to sell at 100 pounds before the uprising, now I’m selling at 40,” he said.

Post-revolutionary expectations are proving hard to match as the government struggles to lure investors, and meet demands for jobs. The economy will grow 1.4 percent this year, the slowest pace since 1992, analysts at HSBC Holdings Plc estimate. The benchmark EGX 30 stock index has slumped about 20 percent since the start of the revolt in January 2011.

‘Everyone’s worried’

“Demand for private security is huge, but people don’t want to pay,” said Sameh Seif Elyazal, chairman of G4S in Egypt. “Everyone’s worried about their assets; at the same time, the country is going through a lot of financial difficulties.”

The Suez Canal city of Port Said has been among the worst- hit areas because of clashes after a court sentenced soccer fans to death for violence last year. The Suez Canal Container Terminal joint venture suspended a night shift in February because of roadblocks.

“Shipping is an international business and has opportunities to go to other countries,” the company said in a statement at the time.

Hiring private security entails its own risks. Karim Ennarah, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, estimates there are more than 200 unregistered private security companies.

“When public security is so unaccountable, when there’s weak oversight from parliament on the police, you can imagine what it’s like with private security,” he said.

Private security law

To regulate the industry, the government has drafted a new private security law that requires all firms to obtain licenses from the Interior Ministry, and have capital of at least 300,000 pounds. Guards would have to pass a course, according to a copy of the law obtained by Bloomberg News.

Firewall only hires people with military experience because the quality of guards elsewhere is “poor,” Samy said. “There are no standards or rules.”

The Fairmont hired 30 Firewall guards after August’s violence. It has spent more than 3 million pounds on equipment so the building can be isolated within 30 seconds, said security director Tarek Raslan.

Increased spending comes even as the number of visitors to Egypt’s pyramids and temples drops.

Arrivals averaged 961,000 a month in 2012, down 22 percent from 2010, according to official data. In a study of tourism opportunities by the World Economic Forum, Egypt ranked last in terms of security and safety, and 138th out of 140 for the business costs associated with crime, violence and terrorism.

The Fairmont has a 30 percent occupancy rate, down from 85 percent before the revolt, Raslan said. A few hundred meters along the Nile riverfront, the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel has been running losses since the uprising and occupancy is 13 percent, said Raymond Khalife, an adviser to the chairman. Protesters have repeatedly clashed with police in the area. On Jan. 28, the hotel itself was the target when dozens smashed their way into the lobby.

The Semiramis, which also hired guards from Firewall and boosted its own security, has no plans to close, Khalife said.

“Our hotels have been through worse, like the Gulf war, and we still didn’t close,” he said. “We’re hoping for better days.”

With assistance from Caroline Alexander in London and Tarek El-Tablawy, Mariam Fam, Salma El Wardany and Ahmed A. Namatalla in Cairo. Editors: Ben Holland, Francis Harris, Andrew J. Barden. To contact the reporters on this story: Nadine Marroushi in Cairo at nmarroushi@bloomberg.net; Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net. 

The post Egypt’s private commandos are doing well during current instability appeared first on Skift.

But Nigerians’ love of champagne is fast becoming fact as well as legend – with new figures forecasting that champagne consumption in the west African country will reach 1.1 million litres by 2017, with 2011 consumption at almost 8bn naira (£31m).

The figures, from research company Euromonitor, found that Nigeria had the fastest growing rate of new champagne consumption in the world, second only to France, and ahead of rapid growth nations Brazil and China, and established markets such as the US and Australia.

“Champagne has its own demographic on the higher end of things – it’s not even about the middle class, it’s about the elite,” said Spiros Malandrakis, a senior analyst at Euromonitor.

“People may find it surprising that Nigeria came second in the rankings, but it has an extremely extravagant elite, with Nollywood and the oil industry.”

Nigerians’ love of big spending has attracted growing attention in recent months. Last year figures revealed that Nigerian tourists in the UK are the fourth biggest foreign spenders, ringing up an average £500 in each shop where they make purchases – four times what the average UK shopper spends.

“At all the celebrity parties in Lagos, they always have champagne. And it has to be the finest – Cristal, Dom Pérignon or Moet et Chandon rosé – these are the things that are important symbols here,” said Vanessa Walters, the Lagos-based editor of Nigerian women’s magazine Genevieve.

“People say that at every elite event the champagne has to be flowing, and that how much champagne there is is a one-upmanship thing, like showing people that your house is bigger than theirs.”

But not everyone in Nigeria – 63% of whose 160 million population still live on less than $1 a day – is impressed with the extent of Nigerian champagne consumption.

“Nigerians’ unhealthy enthusiasm for anything foreign or imported is a plague that continues to pull the country back into this sort of wasteful expenditure,” said an editorial in Nigerian newspaper the Daily Trust in response to the figures.

“[These figures] reveal the profligacy that is offensive, if not obscene.”

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

The post Nigeria is world’s second biggest spender on champagne appeared first on Skift.

Speaking at a satellite event scheduled for the ATM at Raffles Dubai, Zaazou also explained that live camera streams had been set up in popular tourist destinations to show how calm they are.

Related: Egypt: booze and bikinis are welcome, nevermind the Salafis

Despite Egypt’s current challenges, he emphasised that the Egyptian tourism sector was able to withstand negative impacts, adding that Egypt is still home to the most prominent historical, cultural and art events in the region in addition to maintaining its position as one of the top destinations of choice for tourists from around the world.

“Tourisms rates began to return to normal levels, and to move towards the high rates witnessed in 2010,” he asserted.

“The first three months of the year 2013 saw a growth in the number of tourists coming to Egypt, which amounted for 2.8 million, reflecting an increase of 14.6 % compared to the first quarter of 2012. We will be concentrating our efforts on various global markets and in particular the Arab markets, as the number of Arab tourists amounted for 520,000 this year which reflects an increase of 7.5% compared to the first quarter of 2012.”

HE also highlighted Egypt’s ranking as the 18th destination from the top fifty destinations worldwide and receiving the first place among the tourism destinations in MENA region during the year 2012.

“The Ministry, within its strategic plan, seeks to implement all necessary measures to enhance Egyptian tourism, whereby we will work on specific markets, including the Arab World, in addition to targeting new markets in South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico) and Asia (Malaysia, China, India, Korea and Vietnam),” Zaazou stated.

“We will also market Egypt in co-chaired trips to enhance tourist services in line with global standards, and we will work on further developing our human resources in the tourism sector.”

© 2013 ITP Business Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company

The post Egypt to live stream from tourist destinations to show it is safe appeared first on Skift.

The Ritz-Carlton Marrakech and its first property in Rabat, Morocco, which will become the third property in the brand’s growing North Africa portfolio.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company expects the resort to open in December 2014.

The resort will benefit from 100 luxury guest rooms, 15 one-bedroom suites and five two-bedroom suite villas expected to appeal to dignitaries and government delegations from around the world.

Further properties currently under construction in North Africa include The Ritz-Carlton, Tunis, Carthage, a resort featuring 129-suites, situated close to the world heritage site of Carthage, and Morocco a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Tamuda Bay, featuring a 98-luxury room hotel with 35 pool villa suites, a beach club and an 18-hole Nicklaus design golf course.

The Marrakech resort is owned by Jnan Amar Company, a subsidiary of Al Amal Investment Company (SIAMA) part of Azmi Abdelhadi Group of Saudi Arabia.

Construction of the property is due to commence in the fourth quarter of 2013, with completion of the hotel projected for the third quarter of 2016. “We are honoured to have been selected by Jenan Amar, SARL to manage this unique property,” said Herve Humler, President and COO, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. “We believe that the unique location of the resort, with stunning views on the High Atlas Mountains, within such an upscale community of Marrakech, coupled with the diverse culture and rich heritage of the wonderful city itself, will offer our discerning guests an incredibly attractive and aspirational destination to explore.”

Asked about additional growth in the North African region for The Ritz-Carlton, Humler added, “The Ritz-Carlton, Marrakech will be our fourth property in North Africa, each one offering a different proposition, indigenous to the style and location of the hotel or resort. Expansion in this region is unquestionably an essential part of our future growth strategy.”

(c)2013 the Khaleej Times (Dubai, United Arab Emirates). Distributed by MCT Information Services.

The post Ritz-Carlton makes a bet on Tunisia and Morocco with 3 new properties appeared first on Skift.

The village of Beni Izguen in Algeria, suffering due to the downturn of tourists. Paebi / Wikipedia

It is coming up to sunset in Beni Isguen, one of five oasis villages inhabited by the Mozabite ethnic people in this valley in central Algeria, which it was once the busiest time of the day…Some days, hundreds of tourists would arrive in buses to see the dramatic scenery and weird, mud architecture. But this changed earlier this year in the aftermath of the French intervention in Mali, with which Algeria shares a long border.

The situation was exacerbated by February’s attack by an Al Qaeda offshoot on the In Amenas gas installation in Algeria’s east, in which at least 37 foreign hostages were killed, including 10 Japanese.

“Business is about half what it was before,” said Farida Babaamer-Hadj Aissa, owner of the Tiny Tours travel agency in Ghardaia. “It’s because, I think, people are listening to the French journalists.”

The post Algerian tourism industry battered by regional violence appeared first on Skift.

Read the Complete Story...

Tourists walk along the main corridor of the Temple of Hatshepsut, a day after a hot air balloon crash left 19 foreigners dead, in Luxor, February 27, 2013. Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Islamist-ruled Egypt is open to visitors who drink alcohol and wear bikinis as it sets out to boost numbers by at least a fifth this year, the tourism minister said on Sunday.

Tourism is a pillar of the Egyptian economy but has suffered since a popular uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and set off two years of periodic rioting and instability.

The minister, Hisham Zaazou, said the government had “optimistic goals” for the sector, and played down comments from radical Salafi Muslim groups who have called for a ban on alcohol and women wearing swimsuits.

“Bikinis are welcome in Egypt and booze is still being served,” Zaazou, speaking in English, told a news conference during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.

“We had talks with these Salafi groups and now they understand the importance of the tourism sector, but still you have some individuals that are not from the leadership saying these things,” added the minister, an independent who is not a member of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

Islamist President Mohamed Mursi’s government increased taxes on alcohol in December but backed down after the move was criticized by the tourism sector and by liberals.

Decline and rebound

Before the uprising, tourism was worth more than a tenth of Egypt’s economic output. In 2010, 14.7 million visitors came, generating $12.5 billion in earnings, but arrivals slowed to 9.8 million the following year and income to $8.8 billion.

According to Zaazou, 2012 saw a recovery as 11.5 million tourists came and revenues rebounded to about $10 billion. In the first quarter of 2013 about 3 million tourists visited, a 14.6 percent rise from the same period last year, he said.

Egypt’s long term target was to reach 30 million tourists and revenues of $25 billion by 2022.

Zaazou said rebuilding tourism was a national priority. To help meet the goal of increasing visitor numbers by 20 percent this year, his ministry has installed cameras in major resorts which feed live video onto its website.

“We want to show people that Egypt is safe, and the best way to show this is by live streaming. The next step will be to have these images shown on big screens in public squares in Paris or New York.”

Seeking a way into new markets, Egypt tried to open its doors to Iranian tourists this year after 34 years of frozen diplomatic relations. But the move ran into protests from hardline Sunni Islamists in Cairo who accused Iran of trying to spread the Shi’ite faith, leading to the halting of all commercial flights from Iran in April.

“This is just a temporary halt, tourism will resume again and we are currently in talks with these groups who objected,” said Zaazou, who said he hoped the issue would be resolved within two weeks.

Reporting by Amena Bakr. Editing by William Maclean and Mark Trevelyan.

Copyright (2013) Thomson Reuters.

The post Egypt: booze and bikinis are welcome, nevermind the Salafis appeared first on Skift.

And though the damage has been patchy, with beach resorts still thriving even as visitors shun the ancient monuments, lingering uncertainty over the future means it may be years before Egypt regains its place in the sun.

The post Egyptian tourism experiences hills and valleys, will take years to recover appeared first on Skift.

Read the Complete Story...