EGYPT is suffering the full force of tourism slump to Muslim-majority countries in the troubled Mediterranean region.

The number of foreign tourists dropped 46.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2016, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation.

Turkey has also seen an acceleration in the rate of contraction of its tourism sector.

UNWTO data suggests international tourist arrivals fell 9.9% year-on-year in the first three months of 2016 – with a 16.8% drop in revenues – exacerbating a 2.6% slide in the previous quarter, as the industry was hit by a catalogue of woes.

The Turkish Riviera.

However, more timely figures from Turkey’s ministry of culture and tourism point to a 34.7% year-on-year slump in arrivals to 2.5 million in May, the Financial Times reported.

World Travel and Tourism Council president and chief executive, David Scowsill, told the newspaper: “Turkey is probably in the worst shape, with terrorist bombs, the migration crisis, the impact of the Syrian war on its border, the spat with [President Vladimir] Putin and finally the failed coup.

The WTTC believes that the economic value generated by Turkey’s travel and tourism industry will fall 3.2% this year, a sharp worsening of the 0.2% contraction it predicted in March.

Nevertheless, Scowsill argued there were reasons to believe Turkey might recover more quickly than either Egypt or Tunisia.

The feud between Russia and Turkey now appears to have been resolved and Russian tourists are starting to return.

And Scowsill said that past experience showed more “random” acts of terror, such as those targeted at the UK, Spain and France in recent years, tend to have less of a long-term impact on tourism than attacks specifically targeted at holidaymakers, as seen in both Egypt and Tunisia.

In Turkey’s case, the bulk of the bombings attributed to both Isis and Kurdish separatists have been directed at the Turkish people, military and police in Ankara and Istanbul, although a suicide attack in Istanbul in January, that killed at least 10 people, was directed at foreign tourists.

However, Scowsill said “the hotels and beaches in Antalya and Izmir are still in pretty good shape”, with those areas so far, at least, remaining safe.

“We expect [Turkish tourism] to rebuild quite nicely next year if there are no bombings in the tourist areas,” he said.

The WTTC believes the impact from the UK’s Brexit vote will be small this year, but significantly larger in 2017 when, “given sterling’s weakness and weaker UK macro consumer spending”, it predicts “a much weaker outlook for UK outbound departures”.