Two Water Parks and 856 Hotel Rooms Approved on a Million Square Metres South of Hurghada

Egypt's Tourism Development Authority has issued 16 final land-allocation decisions covering just over one million square metres at the South Magawish tourism centre, immediately south of Hurghada, for a package of hotel, service and entertainment projects.

The authority's chief executive, Mostafa Abdel Wahab, said the 16 plots all sit inside approved tourism-centre layouts and are earmarked for schemes that would add:

• about 856 hotel rooms, alongside serviced residence units under specialist management
• an increase in the capacity of one existing project to 946 hotel units
• two aqua parks, one of them to be run by an international operator
• tourism service centres and what he described as upmarket entertainment areas

The Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities, Randa Al-Menshawy, said the expansion is part of a state push to raise Egypt's hotel-room capacity, strengthen its tourist centres and create jobs, and that the ministry and the authority would keep monitoring delivery against the approved timetables, according to Masrawy and Al-Masry Al-Youm. Ahram Online reported the same set of decisions, summarising them as over a million square metres for 856 hotel rooms and two water parks south of Hurghada.

What the announcements do not give is the part that would tell anyone when to expect it. No investor or operator is named, including the international water-park operator. No construction cost is published, and no completion dates are attached to the 16 plots beyond the reference to "approved timetables".

For visitors, the concrete promise is two more water parks on the stretch of coast south of the city. For residents, it is building work and hiring on land that is empty today. It is also the second large Red Sea land story in a single day: Hurghada News reported earlier on Tuesday that the Egyptian group Travco had paid 69 million dollars for 600,000 square metres at Marsa Alam.