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Paris - At least one French tour operator has postponed trips to Egypt, while German and Swiss firms have halted visits to Cairo as protests erupted following the military overthrow of president Mohammed Morsi.
UK and German operators said however it was otherwise business as usual in the country as tourists were mainly heading for the Red Sea area, kilometres away from centres of unrest such as Cairo and Alexandria.
The British and German foreign ministries have advised against all non-essential travel to Egypt, apart from to popular Red Sea resorts such as Sharm el Sheikh, while the French authorities have issued a travel warning for all of Egypt.
Jean-Marc Roze, head of the French travel agencies federation (SNAV), said: "We're giving our members the travel guidelines of the French foreign ministry and we're monitoring a situation that may evolve rapidly."
Thomas Cook France said it was offering its 130 clients already in the Arab country the option to shorten their stay and also announced it had postponed trips to Egypt until 14 July.
"Of course we can expect that there will be an impact, certainly with what's happening the last few days," said John Kester, programme coordinator for market trends at the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
"Tourism is a ... very important sector for the economy, so it's in their interests to return to normal as quickly as possible," Kester said.
Egypt received 14 million international tourists in 2010, before the revolt that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
Western Europeans are the largest group, followed by eastern Europeans and tourists from the Middle East.
That figure fell to 9.5 million in 2011, before recovering to 11.2 million in 2012.
Tourist numbers were up 12% year-on-year in the first five months of this year.
