Azerbaijan develops new tourism strategy
By Nigar Orujova
Azerbaijan, the Land of Fire, is actively developing new strategies to attract tourists to the country.
The Strategy for developing tourism in Azerbaijan for 2016-2025, advanced by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, reflects the current realities in Azerbaijan’s tourism sphere and its development potential.
The government’s role in developing tourism, methods of cooperation with other countries, as well as a number of other important elements and recommendations have been also stressed in the report.
In order to turn Azerbaijan into an attractive and successful place for tourism, the strategy envisages forming policies based on four core principles.
These principles include creating favorable economic conditions for tourism development, the diversity of tourism products, improving industrial standards, and maintaining a public interest in tourism, the ministry said.
The new tourism strategy has now been submitted for approval by the relevant structure and is currently under review.
The previous program on tourism development in 2008-2015 was aimed at the rational use of tourism potential of historical monuments of the country. At that state, Azerbaijan sought to attract some 3 million tourists a year.
Over 2 million tourists came to Azerbaijan last year, creating about one billion manat (over $950,000 million) in revenue from tourism.
Today, the country’s goal is to welcome 5 million tourists a year.
To reach this goal, the country plans to cut airfare, hotel prices, and facilitate its visa process, while constructing additional budget hotels.
To come to the ancient Land of Fire, most tourists from the different parts of the world need a visa and the Foreign Ministry will soon present proposals to facilitate the issuance of those visas.
The country also approved procedures for obtaining visas for tourists upon arrival in Azerbaijan.
The Tourism Ministry has issued the right to design electronic tourist visas to 65 travel agencies that are now going through accreditation.
E-visas for tourists are issued a maximum of 10 days after sending the request. Currently, the Foreign and Tourism Ministries are working to reduce registration time from ten days to five.
Today, the country can accommodate over 35,000 tourists in over 530 hotels, but Azerbaijan still needs more low cost hotels to meet the demands of its budget tourists.
Azerbaijan, the host of the inaugural European Games past June, brought in over 28,000 foreign tourists during the 17 days of the elite sports competition. To keep this trend going, the country might benefit from implementing the above-mentioned recommendations as well as develop other standards for high-quality travel to Azerbaijan.
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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar
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