Greetings, all. I’m back with another set of insider updates for you about what’s going on with the opening – or lack thereof – of the new Grand Egyptian Museum and some greater context to help you understand what the hold up is all about. Then, I’ll get into some very recent news that’s still developing and which I should know more about in the next week or two related to the resumption of private, pre-opening tours of the GEM.
First, let me say that if you want to be the first to hear about news and updates related to the GEM without having to check for a new podcast or blog post at EgyptTravelBlog.com every day, then make sure you’ve signed up at GrandEgyptianMuseum.org to receive update emails about the GEM. This is not the official site for the GEM, but it’s an independent, third-party site about the GEM that I personally created and run, and because of the premium domain real estate it sits on, it has become the go-to site for info about the the museum.
So everyone who signs up to receive email updates about the GEM on that site – GrandEgyptianMuseum.org – will be the first to know anything and everything I find out about the GEM’s opening, when that announcement is finally made public, pre-opening tours, etc. etc.
Just to reiterate though, as if it’s not clear enough on the GrandEgyptianMuseum.org website, I am not a spokesperson for the GEM, I do not work for the government of Egypt or the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and neither I nor GrandEgyptianMuseum.org is an official source of information about the GEM’s opening.
With that said, however, I am a little more in the loop about the GEM and what’s going on in Egypt generally as someone who works daily in tourism on the ground in Egypt, and also as creator of EgyptTravelBlog.com, host of The Egypt Travel Podcast, and editor of Middle East Travel and Tourism. In other words, I have my ear to the ground on all things Egypt more than most, but even I cannot tell you with certainty when the GEM will officially open to the public until the date is confirmed in an official announcement by the government of Egypt. Any “estimated” opening month or date that you may see (by me or anyone else) is just that – an estimate… for now.
The good news I have for you now is that Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities did recently announce that they will soon begin carrying out functionality and capacity tests of the GEM and its facilities in order to help prepare for an anticipate upcoming full opening of the museum to the public.
Note that in its announcement of this “test phase,” the ministry did not elaborate on what this would mean, when it would take place, and who would be doing the testing. Also note that many media reports about the GEM are either outdated (for example, those talking about private tours still being available for $250) or, more often, inaccurately summarize or report on the updates and announcements issued by the ministry.
I cannot tell you how many emails I get every day from people all over the world telling me that they are coming to Egypt in a few weeks and asking me how to book a private tour of the GEM because they read an article saying that private tours were available for $250. Yes, they were available pre-Covid for about 6 months, but those stopped even before the Covid pandemic began. A more limited (and much more expensive) private tour program was restarted in the summery of 2021 for $1000 per person, but this too was stopped by last fall so that the contractors could move faster on the final stages of construction.
However, within the few days, a representative of the GEM just announced the resumption of private GEM tours in an email to limited industry stakeholders, with the cost for these new private, pre-opening tours expected to now be over $2000 per person. Details on how to book these private visits are not yet available, but I will be meeting with representatives of the GEM in the coming weeks and will provide another update specifically on that when more information has been released.
You may also be aware that there was a lot of speculation in the first three quarters of 2022 that this November was a good educated guess for when the government might finally decide to open the GEM, but ultimately they decided that it was still not the right time quite yet. While nearly all of the GEM’s interior work has been finished and virtually all of the external landscaping is done, making the building itself appear perfectly ready to open and start welcoming visitors from the outside and even on the inside, in my somewhat informed opinion I think the main holdup now is the responsible effort to improve the infrastructure surrounding the GEM and between the GEM and the Giza Pyramids just to the south of the new museum.
Now let me explain what I mean by this, and I think it will help shed light on what the holdup is and why it’s actually for a very good reason. The new Grand Egyptian Museum is expected to not only reignite tourism to Egypt to never-before-seen numbers of first-time visitors, but also to prompt millions of people who have visited Egypt before to come back and visit again to see the newest, largest, most modern, and most beautiful archaeological museum in the world.
Pre-Covid, there was no way that the existing infrastructure around the Giza Plateau, where both the GEM and the Pyramids of Giza are located, could have handled this sudden massive influx of new visitors. Not only was there just not enough hotel capacity in Cairo, especially during the October-April high season, but the roads and highways providing access to and through Giza were not nearly big or plentiful enough to handle that level of new traffic. Even without tourists, Cairo’s and Giza’s streets are known worldwide for their crazy traffic, congestion, and gridlock. Throw in a 5-10 million more people (literally) visiting from abroad and imagine the chaos then!!
But the government of Egypt was very smart and strategic in what it did about this during the global pandemic period. While tourism numbers were significantly depressed and local traffic on the roads was down significantly too, and despite the lack of vital tourism revenue coming into the country at that time, the government of Egypt embarked on a massive infrastructure development project to build hundreds of new roads, dozens of new super-highways, bridges, bypasses, expressways, and much more – so much so that Google Maps has had a hard time keeping up with the new road and highway openings across Cairo and Giza. The disruption that this much roadwork and infrastructure expansion would have caused during normal times would have been significant
This is why the government did not want to commit to even an opening year for the GEM pre-Covid. They knew that this work needed to be done first to responsibly host and accommodate the millions of additional visitors that Egypt and the GEM would receive after the new museum’s opening (in addition to the 15-18 million it already receives in normal good years even without the GEM), so during the unexpected halving of road traffic in that area during the first two years of the Covid pandemic the government doubled down on investment in getting these new public works going.
Now, two and a half years after the pandemic began and more than a year after travel and tourism really began to bounce back in Egypt and elsewhere around the world, parts of Cairo and Giza that used to be gridlocked with bumper-to-bumper traffic every hour of every day are much less congested as long-distance travelers across the greater Cairo region divert more and more to the new elevated highways and bypasses that ring and cris-cross the sprawling metropolis.
With all of that said, however, and despite enormous progress on all of that and more (another time I’ll tell you all about the 30 new full cities that Egypt has also been building, including the brand new capital city out in the Eastern Desert that is absolutely stunning and unbelievable), there is still construction work going on to widen and improve the roads in the far west of Giza where entrance to the GEM is going to be. Anyone who has been to the Pyramids lately would know exactly what I’m talking about, because right now when we take people out there we have to take a few U-turns and go through some back roads to bypass the main new thoroughfare in front of the GEM that’s still under construction which, when finished, will also lead to the current gates of the Pyramids complex.
However, when all of this is finished, that area will no longer be the main entrance to the Pyramids. A brand new main entrance to the Pyramids was also constructed on the back, desert-facing side of the compound, and it is right off of several new huge (imagine 8 or 10 lanes in each direction) highways that are already operational in western Giza. Not only has a new entrance been built, but a new ticket sales complex, a remote new parking lot for hundreds of those huge mass-tourism busses that pack people on like sardines, a huge new normal parking lot for normal cars and vans, a new visitors center near the Great Pyramid, and a lot more that’s planned to be upgraded at this site. They’re even creating an electric tram network with multiple stops around the Giza Plateau so that visitors don’t have to walk across these large distances between the pyramids in the hot sun I they don’t want to.
So as you can see, Egypt has been investing heavily in building and finishing the infrastructure necessary to accommodate the unexpectedly enormous demand for tourism that the Grand Egyptian Museum has created and will continue to create in the years following its grand opening. But in closing, let me also address what I know many of you may still be wondering, especially those who are already planning to come to Egypt in late-2022 and early-2023 before we know precisely when the GEM will finally open to the public. One of the most common questions I get nowadays from those who are coming to Egypt in the very near future is whether they will miss out on seeing Egypt’s greatest artifacts and treasures because of the ongoing transfer of old museum exhibits to the conservation labs and exhibit halls of the new Grand Egyptian Museum.
And the answer to this is – no, you will most likely not miss out and you will not be disappointed at all. The most famous treasures, such as the beautiful solid gold burial mask of King Tut, his multiple golden coffins, his funerary jewelry, and thousands of other ancient artifacts will remain in the old Egyptian Museum until the GEM is ready to finally receive them in the last moments before it opens its doors to the public. In order to understand why I saw that there will still be thousands of artifacts and treasures to see even if the GEM isn’t open when you come to Egypt, you have to know what the old Egyptian Museum was like up until about one year ago. It was so overly crowded with artifacts and pieces that it looked more like a packed warehouse of priceless treasures than a museum like we normally think of one.
In our minds in the Western world, major museums around the world showcase masterpieces in glass cases that are pleasantly spaced out as the centerpiece of a room or at least part of a room. In the old Egyptian Museum, however, priceless temple walls, sarcophagi, ancient statues, tomb treasures, and even famous mummies were packed into the museum’s halls and rooms almost as tightly as they packed pharaohs’ tombs for thousands of years until they were discovered. In other words, the old museum was incredibly overcrowded with artifacts… so much so that when the began removing most of them for cleaning in the conservation labs and installation in the GEM’s new large, modern exhibit halls, so many thing still remained in the old museum that it finally just looked like a regular museum without anything missing.
The other good thing for anyone traveling to Egypt before the GEM opens is that the 22-pharaoh strong Royal Mummy Collection, as I call it, was transferred to another new (but smaller) museum in south Cairo called the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. That secondary new museum opened way back in April of 2021, and many objects from the old museum as well as the real mummies of all of Egypt’s greatest and most famous rulers are now housed there and already open to the public to visit.
So here’s the bottom line… No, we don’t know yet when the GEM will fully open to the public. It won’t be in 2022 now, but it will likely be in 2023. We won’t officially know until the official announcement is made by the government, and that will likely happen when they are sure that the infrastructure around the GEM (including roads, bridges, parking, etc.) can handle the millions of additional visitors that are expected to come in the immediate 6-12 months after it finally opens.
What we do know, however, is that they’re going to start the pre-opening private tours again, although we a very hefty price tag because they’re basically opening up the whole building just for you and they have to pay staff and security to come work that day and they’re passing those costs on to whoever wants to see it bad enough to pay for all that, which, when you understand the reasoning and what all goes into making this happen, isn’t that unreasonable after all, even though it seems like it at first when that sticker shock hits.
Another thing we know now is that the new infrastructure works around the Giza Plateau are also now nearly complete, and as soon as everything is finished, tested, and signed off on for mass public use at scale, Egypt will undoubtedly fling open the doors of the GEM to the world and you’ll be able to see the “Eighth World Wonder” proudly residing beside the only one of the original Seven World Wonders that remains in existence.
And when that does happen, you’ll be able to get all the details – not just the headlines but thorough, informed, and comprehensive details like I just gave you above – right here… from yours truly… John Navarre. So consider me at your service now and in the future for anything and everything you need to know about travel to and around Egypt from an unbiased, objective, on-the-ground, and highly experienced point of view.
And remember… if you’re doing your homework and due diligence and researching travel to Egypt (remember it’s not like any other destination), be sure to check out both EgyptTravelBlog.com and The Egypt Travel Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And there’s also a new Egypt Travel Podcast YouTube channel launching very soon for anyone who prefers that format. I’ll also be investing more time in getting the video podcast going so you can put a face with a voice, and we have a few VERY exciting new special projects coming in 2023 that I’m so excited about and can’t wait to introduce to the world to give you even more of an insider’s perspective on traveling to and around Egypt.
