Britons told to avoid travel to Egypt While the Red Sea resorts attract the majority of foreign visitors to the country, the warning means that thousands of package holidays and cruises to the country's ancient attractions - such as Luxor and Giza - will be cancelled. Holidaymakers will be entitled to a full refund or an alternative itinerary, but are under no obligation to accept the latter. Thomson and First Choice have cancelled all outbound flights to Luxor scheduled for Wednesday, Thomson Cruises is ammending its Egyptian itineraries to include stops at Ag Nik, Crete and Haifa, Israel instead of Alexandria and Port Said. It added that the majority of its customers are in Sharm El Sheikh, which has not been affected by the demonstrations. Discover Egypt, which specialises in the country's ancient attractions, rather than the Red Sea resorts, told the trade website Travelmole that it had cancelled all holidays until at least Saturday. Independent travellers will be able to go ahead with their trip, should they wish to do so, but may face difficulty obtaining adequate insurance. Airlines and hotels are not legally required to offer a refund, but most carriers may be willing to let fliers postpone their trips. Should anyone due to visit one of the Red Sea resorts wish to cancel their trip, they will not be able to do so free of charge. The Foreign Office's warning is more extensive than the one issued in January 2011, at the height of the uprising that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, when it advised Britons to avoid travel to Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor and Suez. That advisory was lifted a few months later. It will come as a huge blow to the country's tourism industry, which employs one in eight Egyptians, as well as British tour operators. Even before the advisory was issued, the recent unrest had led to a fall in inquiries, with Abta, the travel association, describing the last few weeks as a "the quietest" period it could remember for bookings to the country.