Egypt’s Image Repair Strategies in Time of Crisis: A Case Study of the Russian Flight Crash

In the wake of the Russian plane crash in November in 2015 in Sinai, Russia and a number of countries suspended their airlines from operating routes to Sharm el-Sheikh, causing a severe tourist crisis. By the end of 2015, tourism receipts fell by about USD 3.6 billion to represent only 1.1 percent of GDP (IMF, 2017). During the 26 months air traffic suspension, Egypt becomes a word that conjures negative images such as unsafe destination, insecure environment and politically unstable country which sent a danger signal to the observing people of the possible risks involved in visiting Egypt (Matthews, 2016). However, during this period Egypt pursued a collective effort to enhance Egypt’s image and to encourage the tourism markets to resume their travels to Egypt. In January 2018, the Russian government finally lifted its two years ban on Russian tourism to Egypt and Russian flights returned to Cairo in April 2018 (Samir, 2019).This study aims to uncover strategies used by Egypt’s authorities to restore a positive image in the aftermath of Russian flights suspension, based on Benoit’s (1997) “multi-strategies model for repairing a destination image”. The study applies a qualitative content analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews with officials in the Egyptian tourism and civic aviation authorities. The efforts to repair the image of the Egyptian tourism industry evolved through two phases. At first, the discourse revolved around evading responsibility and attempted to reduce the crisis’s perceived offensiveness, relying mainly on bolstering and defeasibility. The second phase appeared to emerge gradually, using corrective actions in order to restore Egypt’s image as a ‘safe’ tourist destination.