Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

No matter if you're in Azerbaijan for a couple of days or for a few months, you owe it to yourself to visit the colorful Shopping Festival.

The first-ever Baku Shopping Festival held this spring offered its participants a whole lot of options: shopping, entertainment, food and street performances. Many city malls offered special discounts, Tax Free, and temporary pop-up shops presented a broad range of Azerbaijani and foreign brands.

Now, Baku gets ready for the second Shopping Festival, a 30-day shopping extravaganza that will offer customers discounts, entertainment and street performances.

Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev said that the autumn festival is scheduled for October 15-November 15

The shopping centers of the capital city will provide customers with discounts during this period, the minister said adding that 700,000 manats were spent on the organization of the first Shopping Festival.

Garayev said that next Baku Shopping Festival will involve over 500 participants, while at the last festival this figure was less than 300.

The minister added that the process of refunding value added tax (VAT) to participants will be even simpler this time.

The first Festival was held between April 10 and May 10, where besides discounted shopping, there were other activities for travelers like music concerts, fashion shows, children’s events and lots more to double the fun.

During the festival, lotteries were organized and bonus cards were issued. Citizens of Azerbaijan and foreign tourists could use the Tax Free system when buying goods worth 100 manats ($58.8) or more.

As many as 205 stores joined the first Baku Shopping Festival, and 172 of them took part in the VAT refund program. Some 1.8 million manats ($1.06 million) of VAT were refunded to customers at the Baku Shopping Festival.

The festival brought revenues worth 5.6 million manats ($3.3 million) to the state budget. During the festival period about 260,000 tourists visited Azerbaijan.

Overall, the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan increased by 23.1 percent in eight months of 2017 as compared to the same period of 2016. In January-August 2017, 1.818 million people visited Azerbaijan.

The number of foreigners visiting Azerbaijan rose by 11.7 percent in 2016 as compared to 2015. During this period more than 860,000 people were accommodated in hotels.

Today, Azerbaijan can accommodate about 40,000 tourists in its 575 hotels, which include a series of luxury hotels – Excelsior, Hilton, Four Seasons, Fairmont, JW Marriott – as well as several budget hotels for cost-conscious travelers. Moreover, 25 hostels and 92 apartments for tourists operate in Baku.

As for simplification of visa regime, Abulfas Garayev has hailed the work of ASAN Viza system, which is a unique opportunity for foreign tourists.

“Perhaps, for citizens of some countries special rules will be applied, but this is a part of foreign policy,” he said.

Today, citizens of 93 countries take advantage of ASAN Visa system. Electronic visa is a document for one entry, which determines the period of stay in the country up to 30 days. The visa is issued just in three hours.

The visa fee is $20. Electronic visa applications are available for one person, for a family (not less than two and not more than ten persons) and for a group of 10-300 people.

Speaking about the introduction of a system of dumping in the tourism sector, the minister stressed that he is against artificial price regulation.

“Dumping creates conditions for the bankruptcy of companies. It is possible that some company offers a 2-star hotel for one price and another can offer something yet,” he said.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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