Skift Take

At first glance EgyptAir's tourism promotion seems to echo the recent tone-deaf efforts of the Syrian Tourism of Ministry, but its attempts to assist flyers still heading to Egypt is commendable given the current state of the country's aviation industry.

Samantha Shankman, Skift

August was a bad month for Egyptian tourism.

Tourists fled as the military murdered hundreds of ousted President Morsi’s supporters, Cairo went up in flames, and curfews were instituted in cities.

Thousands of European tourists staying in Red Sea Resorts left the country in a matter of days and arrivals at Egypt’s airports dropped more than 40 percent in one week.

All this is on top of the estimated $400 million a month that Egypt was already losing in tourism revenues due to ongoing political conflicts.

Despite all of this, the country’s flag carrier EgyptAir is keeping its cool on social media and going about business as usual.

In a travel update posted on EgyptAir’s website on August 25, the airline announced that all international and domestic flights were operating as normal with zero planned cancellations.

More Active Than Ever

According to Skift’s social data dashboard SkiftSocial, EgyptAir sent an average of 10.5 tweets a day for the past two weeks. This is higher than the average number of daily tweets, 4.2, that it’s sent since the account’s launch

EgyptAir doesn’t comment on political strife. It promotes autumn sales, plays travel trivia, and assists customers.

Ninety-one, or 62 percent, of the 147 tweets it sent over the past two weeks are replies or retweets. The account points followers to airport hotels available for flyers arriving after curfew, sends them relevant phone numbers, and relays complaints to the “relevant department,” which some customers think means the garbage.

EgyptAir also talks to customers on its Facebook page where it replies 90 percent of customers’ posts within 3 hours.

EgyptAir posts and replies in both English and Arabic, although English is primary language on Twitter.

Below are some typical tweets from the airline that keeps tweeting despite plummeting air traffic and a national crisis:

smartphone

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Samantha Shankman, Skift

September 6th, 2013 at 12:16 AM EDT

Tags: egypt, twitter

Photo credit: Egyptair Boeing 777 lands at Heathrow Airport. Mark Harkin / Flickr

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