(Photo: China Plus)

CAIRO, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Egypt will carry out a tourism promotion campaign to attract more Chinese tourists to the monument-rich Arab country, the Egyptian tourism minister said Wednesday before flying to Beijing for an economic forum.

"The Chinese market is one of the important and promising tourist markets that the ministry seeks to attract," Egyptian Tourism Minister Dalia al-Mashat said according to a statement by her ministry.

Mashat headed to the Chinese capital earlier in the day to attend Bloomberg's New Economy Forum held on Nov. 20-22.

The minister said she was invited to the forum "to present the successful experience of Egypt's tourism sector."

She noted that her ministry won the World Travel Markets 2019 Global Leaders Award for the first time for its contribution to the industry.

"Attention is strongly directed to Egypt and the tangible accomplishment of its tourism sector which achieved a record high of revenues in the fiscal year 2018-2019 that reached $12.6 billion," Mashat said, adding the revenues are 28 percent higher than those of the previous fiscal year.

The number of Chinese tourists who visited Egypt rose to nearly half a million in 2018, according to Chinese official statistics.