About Museum Pass Planners — Independent Egypt Pass Desk Since 2016

How we started

Built out of frustration with a broken ticketing system

Museum Pass Planners grew out of a problem that Selma Badawi encountered daily in her former role as a ticketing officer at the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square. Visitors arrived at the admissions counter having done careful research online, yet they were still buying the wrong combination of tickets. A family heading to the Giza plateau the following morning had already purchased a full five-day Cairo Pass they would barely scratch. A couple on a twenty-four-hour layover had paid for single tickets that together cost more than the combo bundle sold twenty metres away. The information was not hidden; it was just scattered, inconsistent and frequently out of date.

Selma left the ministry in 2016 and spent four months building a comparison spreadsheet of every pass, bundle and discount rate she could document from official sources. The initial version covered the Cairo Pass, the Luxor Pass, the standard Giza combination ticket, the student rate at each site, and the resident rate for Egyptian nationals — fifteen price points in total. She shared it with a community of local tour guides who found it immediately useful and asked whether she planned to offer it as a service.

Museum Pass Planners Egypt L.L.C. was formally registered in Cairo later that year with a simple mandate: maintain current, accurate pricing data and apply it to the actual itinerary of anyone who asks. No commissions, no referral fees, no upselling. The only revenue model was and remains the service plans we offer to individual travellers and tour operators who want a detailed written review of their planned entry purchases.

The Museum Pass Planners desk team at their Garden City office in Cairo

Our mission

One clear answer to a genuinely messy question

Egypt's entry fee structure is among the most complicated of any major heritage destination in the world. Our job is to reduce that complexity to a single, justified recommendation for each visitor.

The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities maintains more than two hundred individually ticketed sites across Egypt. A minority of those sites are bundled under one of three multi-entry passes — the Cairo Pass, the standard Luxor Pass and the premium Luxor Pass. The Grand Egyptian Museum, which began phased operations in 2022 and reached full capacity by 2024, introduced its own timed-entry ticketing that does not yet overlap with any existing pass. Student discounts vary from fifty percent at most sites to a flat reduction at a handful of premium tombs, and the documentation on which card qualifies is inconsistently applied at the gate level.

On top of the structural complexity, prices for foreign visitors have changed six times in the past four years as Egypt adjusted its tourism pricing to reflect the devaluation of the pound and rising operational costs at major sites. A guide published in 2023 is already unreliable for a 2026 trip. We review every rate monthly and re-check whenever a visitor submits specific travel dates, because a figure that was accurate in March may not be accurate in July.

Our mission is not to persuade anyone to buy a pass. It is to deliver an honest, numbers-backed answer to the question every visitor eventually faces: is a pass worth it for my trip? Sometimes that answer is yes, the Luxor Pass will save you a significant amount over five days. Sometimes it is no, you're going to Karnak and Luxor Temple once each — buy two single tickets at the gate and skip the queue at the pass office. We tell you which is which.

What we stand for

Three values that shape every recommendation

Value 01

Price accuracy first

We never quote a rate we have not verified against an official ministry source, a posted on-site notice, or direct confirmation from a ticket office in the past thirty days. We mark provisional figures clearly and tell you when to re-check before buying. Museum entry fees for foreign visitors in Egypt change more frequently than most travel resources acknowledge, and an outdated price can flip a pass from good value to a waste of money. Our pricing log goes back to 2016 and we can show you how any particular rate has moved over time.

Value 02

No financial interest in the outcome

We do not receive commission or referral fees from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, from any tour operator, or from any reseller of passes or permits. The desk operates on a flat-fee model for our planning service. This means the recommendation you receive reflects the numbers, not a margin. If the right answer for your trip is two single tickets totalling EGP 500 rather than a USD 100 pass, that is what we will tell you — even though the pass would have been a more impressive-sounding recommendation.

Value 03

Practical over theoretical

A pass that theoretically covers twenty-seven sites is not valuable if the pass office is only open on weekday mornings and you arrive on a Friday. We document operating conditions — pass collection points, card-only counters, sites that are closed on rotating days, and photographyPermit requirements — alongside the pricing data. A recommendation from us includes the practical steps to execute it, not just a headline number. See our notes on visitor budgeting and passholder perks for the kind of detail we normally cover.

The people

Meet the team behind the desk

Museum Pass Planners is deliberately small. Four people maintain the data, run the calculations and handle every visitor enquiry personally. There is no chatbot and no template response.

Founder

Selma Badawi

Selma spent eight years as a senior ticketing officer at the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, where she managed admissions for the busiest site in the Cairo portfolio. She observed first-hand how the pass and combo-ticket structure confused even experienced travellers, and left the ministry in 2016 to build the comparison resource she wished had existed during her years at the counter. Selma handles every recommendation that involves the Cairo Pass and the Giza plateau, where she knows the gate operations down to which turnstile accepts digital vouchers and which requires a paper print. She reviews the full pricing database at the end of each month and signs off on any published rate before it goes live on the site.

Data & Pricing

Hatem Ragab

Hatem joined the desk in 2018 after five years as an economist with a regional tourism consultancy in Cairo. His background is in price modelling and he brought a more systematic approach to the way the desk structures its comparison data: every pass is now tracked against a matrix of individual site prices, with a break-even calculator that flags the exact visit count at which a pass becomes the cheaper option. Hatem maintains the currency-conversion layer — entry fees quoted in EGP need to be restated in USD and EUR at current rates for international visitors — and keeps a running record of every price change announcement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. His work on the visitor budgeting reference guides has helped over four thousand individual travellers since it launched in 2021.

Visitor Liaison

Yousra Adel

Yousra manages all incoming enquiries and is the person whose name appears on the email response that reaches visitors. She joined in 2020, having previously worked at a Cairo boutique travel agency where she specialised in Nile cruise and Upper Egypt itineraries. Her expertise is in Luxor and Aswan — she has personally verified entry procedures at Karnak, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, Medinat Habu, Deir el-Bahari, the Colossi of Memnon, Philae, the Nubian Museum and the unfinished obelisk. When a visitor asks about an Aswan or Upper Egypt trip, Yousra handles the reply. She is also the desk's point of contact for questions about family entry rates and school group pricing, having handled more than two hundred group enquiries since joining.

Logistics & Site Hours

Karim Soliman

Karim tracks the operational side of every site in the database: opening hours, seasonal schedule changes, closure days, cash-only vs card-only payment conditions, photography permit requirements and the location and hours of each pass collection point. This information changes more frequently than price data and is rarely reflected in official online sources, which is why Karim maintains a direct-contact list of site ticketing supervisors he can call to verify a detail before it goes into a recommendation. He joined the desk in 2022 and has added particular depth to the documentation around the Grand Egyptian Museum's timed-entry system, which operates differently from every other ticketed site in Egypt. He also monitors seasonal promotional offers issued by the Ministry of Tourism and private operators.

Growth by year

Ten years of building the database

From a single spreadsheet shared among local guides to a structured service used by individual travellers, tour operators and school groups across thirty countries.

2016

First database published

Selma Badawi registers Museum Pass Planners Egypt L.L.C. and publishes the initial comparison database covering fifteen price points across the Cairo Pass, Luxor Pass and main Giza combination tickets. The service is offered to individual travellers via direct email enquiry only. First fifty enquiries handled in the launch month.

2018

Pricing model formalised

Hatem Ragab joins and rebuilds the comparison data as a structured break-even model. The desk introduces its first paid service tier for tour operators and travel agencies requiring a written comparison report. Student and resident rate verification added as a formal step in all recommendations. Database expands to forty-two price points.

2020

Upper Egypt coverage added

Yousra Adel joins, bringing systematic coverage of Luxor, Aswan and the southern sites. The desk adds a dedicated Luxor Pass standard vs premium comparison module and begins documenting photography permit requirements across all major sites. First school group enquiry handled. Visitor budgeting reference guides launched.

2022

GEM tracking begins

Karim Soliman joins to handle site operations documentation. The Grand Egyptian Museum begins phased operations and the desk starts tracking its separate timed-entry ticketing system. First combo ticket recommendations that include the GEM alongside the older plateau sites. Database reaches ninety price points across sixty-four ticketed sites.

2024

Currency layer and rate alerts

Following two significant rounds of entry fee increases for foreign visitors, the desk introduces a currency-adjusted display showing prices in EGP, USD and EUR simultaneously. Rate-change alerts added for tour operators on the Group plan. The museumpass.xyz site launches to replace the previous email-only service. Monthly rate review process formalised.

2026

Fourth thousand visitor served

The desk passes four thousand individual visitor recommendations since launch and begins tracking inquiries from thirty countries. New modules added for city card comparison and seasonal promotional monitoring. The database now covers over one hundred and ten price points. The current service structure — three plans covering individuals, families and operators — is confirmed for the 2026–2027 season.

By the numbers

What a decade of focused work produces

Reach

4,000+ visitor recommendations

Every recommendation is individual and based on the specific itinerary submitted. We do not use templates or auto-generate outputs. Each reply is reviewed by a member of the team before it is sent. The median response time for a full written comparison is under twenty-four hours during the season.

Depth

110+ price points tracked

The database covers every current pass, every bundled combination ticket and every documented discount rate across Egypt's major heritage sites. Each price point is tied to a verification date and a source. Outdated figures are flagged rather than removed, so the historical rate movement is visible for visitors comparing current offers against past seasons.

Coverage

64 ticketed sites documented

From the Egyptian Museum and the Giza plateau in Cairo to Philae Temple in Aswan, including operational notes — opening days, payment methods, photography permit conditions and pass collection point hours — for each. We document the sites visitors ask about most: the Valley of the Kings, Karnak, Abu Simbel, the Grand Egyptian Museum and the Saqqara complex.

A note on funding

The desk is funded entirely by the flat fees charged for our planning service. We receive no advertising revenue, no commission from pass operators, and no payment from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities or any affiliated body. If someone offers us a commercial arrangement, we decline and disclose it in our FAQ. This is not a policy we adopted reluctantly — it is the reason a recommendation from us means anything.

Get in touch

Ready to plan your entry budget?

The fastest way to get a recommendation is to send us your itinerary — list the sites you plan to visit and your travel dates for each city. We'll review it against the current pricing database and reply with the pass or ticket combination that fits your trip and the break-even numbers behind the choice.

If you'd like to understand what the service includes before submitting an itinerary, the plan comparison page explains each level. For immediate questions about a specific pass or site, see the all passes overview. Tour operators and travel agencies can contact us about the Group & Operator plan, which includes a standing rate-change alert and priority response.

Send your itinerary

About the Desk