BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 2. Turkmenistan hopes to launch direct air communication with Azerbaijan, General Director of Turkmenistan's Bakhtiyar Dostlar Travel Agency Ruslan Sadykov said, Trend reports.
He made the remark during the panel discussion on the "Organization and status of serial study tours along route directions from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey to Azerbaijan with the support of Associations travel agencies" within the framework of the I Forum of Tour Operators of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) held in Baku.
“The main factor positively influencing tourism is the availability of air transportation. Even when we were coming here, we had to fly via Istanbul. This is, of course, one of the inconvenient challenges, but I hope that soon there will be direct air service between our countries,” he emphasized.
The Economic Cooperation Organization is an intergovernmental regional organization established in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan, and Türkiye to promote economic, technical, and cultural cooperation among member states.
Meanwhile, in 1992, the organization expanded further with the entry of seven new members: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
To note, a total of 36,154 tourists from Central Asian countries visited Azerbaijan from January through March this year, which is 84 percent higher than the figure for the same period in 2023 (19,659 people).
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