Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 12
By Kamila Aliyeva - Trend:
Foreign citizens and stateless persons will now be charged a fee of 10 percent of the minimum wage (14,977 soums) for each day of their stay in the hotels of Uzbekistan.
This is stated in the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers on Amendments to the Regulation "On the procedure for collecting tourist (hotel) tax on the territory of Uzbekistan" dated October 9.
Prior to this, the fee was $2 at the exchange rate of the Central Bank at the time of payment.
Means from fees are transferred by hotels to the account of the Fund for Support of the Tourist Sphere under the Uzbek State Committee.
Tourist tax will be charged by hotels both for the full day of residence as for the incomplete one.
Uzbekistan is home to Bukhara, Khiva and Samarkand, three cities considered jewels along the Old Silk Road trade routes that used to connect Europe and Asia. Thousands of tourists visit the cities every year.
There are many types of tourism being offered in Uzbekistan: historical and cultural tourism, ethnic tourism, adventure tourism, ecological tourism and health tourism.
The tourist infrastructure in recent years has been raised to a fairly high level. In particular, 1,176 tourist organizations, including 621 tour operators, 555 hotel farms, successfully operate in Uzbekistan. An extensive network of hotels for more than 25,000 seats meet modern international standards.
Over the past nine months, about 1.8 million tourists have visited Uzbekistan, which is 17 percent more than in the same period of last year. At the same time, exports of tourism services, which reached $1.8 billion, grew by 17 percent.
Uzbekistan expects to host more than 2.5 million tourists, according to the results of 2017.