Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 3
By Anvar Mammadov – Trend:
Russia offered Azerbaijan to create joint tour packages to attract tourists from China, Deputy Head of Tourism Department of Azerbaijan’s Culture and Tourism Ministry Rauf Pashayev told Trend.
Pashayev said that Russia and China plan to launch flights to the South of Russia within the framework of cooperation on the Silk Road project.
“Direct flights from China’s Sichuan Province to Russia’s Sochi city, as well as other cities in the South of Russia are planned within the framework of cooperation,” Pashayev said. “This will lead to a great number of Chinese tourists in the region.”
“Considering the fact that Chinese tourists prefer tour packages, Russia offers us to discuss creation of joint tour packages, which would cover the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan,” he noted. “This would allow us to jointly attract Chinese tourists to the region.”
He went on to add that this issue will be discussed in the ministry, and the Azerbaijani side will consider possibility of its contribution to this project.
Pashayev also noted that Azerbaijan’s Culture and Tourism Ministry aims to gradually increase the tourist flow to the country from the former Soviet republics, especially from Russia.
“With that purpose, we opened our office in Russia in 2016 and we intend to strengthen advertising of tourism on Russian TV channels in order to increase Russia’s population awareness of our country,” Pashayev added.
“The office’s activity will bear fruit only in several years, as it was the case with the countries of the Persian Gulf,” he said. “Our offices in these countries were opened in 2011, and only in five years, the activity brought results: the number of tourists from the countries of the Persian Gulf increased incredibly.’
“The several percent growth in inflow of tourists from Russia was observed this year and I think this indicator will only increase in the future,” he noted.
As many as 1.719 million tourists visited Azerbaijan for the last nine months of 2016, according to the country’s Culture and Tourism Ministry. Compared to the same period last year, the number of tourists grew by 169,430 people, or 10.9 percent.