95% of Marsa Alam Land Appeals Accepted, With Developers Facing 5,800–6,500 Pounds a Metre and an 80% Build Rule

Nearly 95% of the appeals filed by Egyptian tourism companies against the withdrawal of undeveloped land in Marsa Alam have been accepted by the ministerial committee for settling investment disputes, according to Bloom Gate, which cites sources at Egyptian tourism companies and reporting by Al Arabiya Business.

More than 33 plots were withdrawn in Marsa Alam by the General Authority for Tourism Development, and the companies whose appeals were accepted are expected to start being notified during the last quarter of this year.

The terms for regularising their position are specific:

• Construction must reach at least 80% of the project's total building plan, measured by what is actually on the ground.
• The price is set between EGP 5,800 and EGP 6,500 per square metre.
• A project standing at 50% completion must be brought up to 80%, with 30% of its area paid for at the new prices and the remainder exempt from repricing.
• Prices and deadlines differ from project to project and are decided by the Tourism Development Authority, the tourism investment arm of the Housing Ministry.

The land was taken back from projects that had not reached 80% construction and had run past their agreed timetables. A government source told Al Arabiya Business the withdrawals are meant to push companies to keep to those timetables and to end land hoarding, as Egypt pursues a target of about 500,000 hotel rooms by 2030 against roughly 230,000 today. Hotel capacity built on land under the authority's jurisdiction stands at about 110,000 rooms and is expected to reach 115,000 by the end of this year.

Marsa Alam is part of a much larger caseload. Al Arabiya Business reported on 20 August that the committee — formed by prime ministerial decree and chaired by the Minister of Justice — intended to rule on around 200 appeals from Red Sea tourism investors before the end of 2026. The authority also offered compliant companies extended deadlines and rescheduled instalments earlier this year.

Not everyone is satisfied. One investor told Al Arabiya Business the new regularisation prices are high and double the burden on companies, pointing to two decades of unstable tourist flows — the period after 2011, the pandemic and regional tensions — and said some firms had paid for their land in full but fell behind for reasons outside their control.

Neither report names a single company or identifies which plots are involved, and no date is given for the notifications beyond the final quarter. For Marsa Alam the practical question is which of those 33-plus stalled sites now actually get built, because each one carries hotel rooms, jobs and the roads and services that come with them.