Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 21
By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:
Iran has earned over $10.5 billion in eight months since last March 21 from tourism and exporting services.
In the mentioned period, the country's revenue from technical and engineering services, tourism, transit and transport, IT as well as sending labor force abroad was $10,625 billion which indicates a two billion dollar growth year-on-year, ISNA news agency reported.
According to the report, tourism sector with $6.15 billion, technical services with $2.24 billion, transit and transportation with about $2 billion of income ranked as leading sectors in terms of revenue in the country.
The report forecasted that the health tourism sector is capable of earning at least $40 billion per year in case the officials manage to attract the investors.
The country owns about 1,100 hotels - 130 of them have four and five stars. Iran plans to triple the number of hotels in the country before 2025.
Experts believe that by 2025, the number of the tourists arriving in Iran will increase from five million to 20 million, while the number of hotels remains as a main challenge for both Iranian officials as well as international and domestic tour operators.