The vendors of Cairo’s Khan el-Khalily bazaar provide a colourful barometer of international wealth. The richer a country is, the more fluently touts bark its language at passers-by; in recent years, Egyptian-accented Mandarin and Russian have come into style.
The trend is illustrative. A country’s tourism industry depends largely on who can afford to travel. In Egypt, where tourism employs more than 12 per cent of the workforce, recessions in Germany, Italy and the UK – three of the country’s four biggest sources of tourists – have sparked plenty of worry.
