Dubai's Emaar Properties has won an auction to buy a 7 kilometre strip of prime luxury tourism real estate on Egypt's Mediterranean coast for $175 million, Egyptian officials said on Saturday.
The 6.2 million square metres development will include two five-star hotels, a marina, luxury golf course, shopping centres, a mosque, helipad and sports facilities.
Shafik Gabr, a representative of Emaar in Egypt, said the firm will spend 10 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.74 billion) to develop the site, and estimated the project would be completed five years after receipt of the land.
Emaar beat Egypt's Orascom Hotels and Development and the Talaat Mustafa Group, an Egyptian real estate investment firm, to win the auction in a fourth round of the contest with a bid of 1 billion Egyptian pounds ($175 million).
Egypt, whose economy relies heavily on tourism but has seen a string of bomb attacks target its popular Red Sea resort areas, is hoping to develop its north coast beaches to help boost tourist numbers to 14 million a year by mid-2011.
Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieldin said Emaar's proposal for the land - 25 km from the Al Alamein international airport near the World War Two battlefield of the same name - included plans for 4,023 hotel rooms in addition to more than 5,300 residential holiday units.
Tourism is a vast foreign currency earner in Egypt, home to the Giza pyramids, pharaonic tombs and temples in its south, and Red Sea beach resorts on the Sinai peninsula.
Egypt also has about 450 km (280 miles) of Mediterranean coastline between the city of Alexandria and the Libyan border to the west. Developers have built up many stretches for domestic summer tourism but parts remain untouched.
The north coast has not typically drawn large numbers of higher-spending foreign tourists. But officials say the area could offer opportunities for desert safaris, diving excursions to sunken ships, and trips to historic Alexandria.
"The aim of the project is to develop the site to make it into a source of attraction for European and Arab tourists all year round by exploiting its moderate climate and beautiful shores," a statement by the state-owned Egyptian holding company that conducted the auction said.
Tourism pulls in more than $7 billion a year in Egypt, equivalent to almost 10 percent of the economy, and employs one in 10 Egyptian workers. Some 8.6 million tourists visited Egypt in 2005, up 6 percent from 8.1 million in 2004 but still below an official target of 9 million, according to official figures.
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