Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 18
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Iran’s tourism sector revenues stood at $3,943 million during the first half of the current fiscal year (started March 20), according to a report released by the country’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO).
The figure indicates a fall by 1.1 percent compared to the same period of the preceding year.
Iran’s tourism revenues stood at $560 million during the Iranian sixth calendar month (March 20-Sept. 22).
According to TPO Iran earned $7,500 million via tourism in the fiscal year to March 2016, meanwhile the figure increased by 11 percent to $8,320 million in the next year (March 2016-2017).
However Iran’s planed revenues in the fiscal year to March 2017 estimated at $12,000 million, which shows that the plan was realized by 69 percent.
According to the latest statistics of Iranian Culture and Heritage Organization’s official statistics, over the first five months of the current Iranian fiscal year, 2.159 million tourists arrived in Iran, 1.1 percent less year-on-year.
The top five nations are Iraq (647,336 tourists, 8 percent fall), Azerbaijan (384,625 tourists, 14 percent fall), Afghanistan (298,990 tourists, 21 percent increase), Turkey (226,757 tourists, 24 percent increase) and Pakistan (81,950 tourists, 2.6 percent fall).
The ranking is as follows: Turkmenistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, India, China, Germany, Lebanon, France, Italy, Oman and Georgia.
Germany citizens were the top European tourists who arrived in Iran during the first five months of the current fiscal year. Over 23,700 German tourists travelled to the Islamic Republic in the period, 1.8 percent less compared to the same period of preceding year.
France (19,000 tourists, 17.6 percent increase), Italy (15,270 tourists, 11 percent more), Netherlands (9,770 tourists, 27 percent increase), UK (7,570 tourists, 25 percent more) and Austria (5,380 tourists, 18 percent more) were top the top European countries which send tourists to Iran in the period.
The statistics also indicates that over 720 tourists from US visited Iran in the 5-month period, registering a huge fall by 69 percent year-on-year.