Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum Set to Open With Conference Center, Luxury Hotel
Cairo's much anticipated Grand Egyptian Museum opening may have been postponed to early next year but business and leisure travelers should put it on their calendars now as it will be worth the wait
The Grand Egyptian Museum which was set to open this summer has been postponed to early next year due to the Covid-19 crisis. Although the opening has been postponed, none of the plans around the massive complex have changed.
The complex comprises the museum itself, a 1 billion dollar build that will house the treasures of King Tutankhamun formerly in the Tahrir Square Cairo Museum as well as thousands of other, heretofore unseen treasures.
The GEM area, set on the Giza Plateau, also includes a 1,000 seat conference center and a luxury hotel.
“The hotel is yet unbranded,” says Dr. Tarek Tawfik, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Archeology, Cairo University and the first longstanding former Director General of the Grand Egyptian Museum Project.
Tawfik says that although the opening of the museum has been postponed out of an abundance of caution, once open the “massive space of over 490,000 meters will certainly lend itself to creative self-distancing methods.”
Within the museum itself such methods may include the ability to download commentary with QR codes directly to personal devices rather than use museum equipment, Tawfik says.
“With such space we will have good visitor flow,” he adds.
The GEM complex’s opening is one of the most anticipated in the world and additions such as a massive conference center and a major luxury hotel point to the build as a major driver of business as well as leisure travel to Cairo.
Bleisure travelers combining business with pleasure, will also have the option of working with high end bespoke travel companies like Vuitton Travelwhich is creating several small capacity tours around the opening of the GEM next year.
Vuitton Travel CEO, Kenn Laya says that these tours will require health certificates for participants and that anyone who cannot attend because of their Covid-19 status will receive a full refund.
