More Chinese tourists to visit country

27 July 2019 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

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By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Azerbaijan is among the fastest-growing destinations for tourists, which successfully meets tourists’ expectations by its beautiful nature, hospitality of its people, the country's capital with its super modern and ancient buildings.

Rufat Bagirov, Director of Baku Tourist Information Center, said at presentation of the project “Street Performers” that the number of Chinese tourists arriving in Azerbaijan will increase.

He said that the number of Chinese tourists will grow in accordance with the memorandum signed between Azerbaijan and China, and this growth is already observed.

The memorandum concluded with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China envisages the simplification of group tours of Chinese tourists in Azerbaijan. The number of the incoming Chinese tourists can reach 200,000 in the coming years.

“In the last 2-3 years, many number of tourists came to Azerbaijan, including to Baku. In comparison with previous years, this year, the number of tourists arriving in Azerbaijan increased by 6.5 percent. Statistics on the number of tourists is growing monthly and annually,” Bagirov noted.

He also added that tourists pursue different travel goals by visiting Azerbaijan and the State Agency for Tourism is making efforts to increase the flow of tourists into the country.

In recent years, the creation of a diversified tourism infrastructure in Azerbaijan has increased the interest of foreign tourists to the country. There are many opportunities for tourism in Azerbaijan, including rural, health, environmental, cultural, social, commercial, sport, and other kinds of tourism.

Earlier, Chairman of the State Agency for Tourism said that Azerbaijan expects to increase the number of coming tourists by 8-12 percent by the end of this year, mainly due to the tourist flow from China, other Asian countries and Israel.

The number of tourists from China who arrived in Azerbaijan in January-April this year grew by 1.6 times.

Moreover, there is an increase in the number of Japanese tourists visiting the country. The growth rate of the number of tourists from Japan reached 37.1 percent.

In general, In January-June 2019, Azerbaijan was visited by 1.4 million foreign tourists, which recorded 86,000 tourists or 6.5 percent growth compared to the same period of 2018.

As for Asian tourists, 54,100 tourists from Central Asia visited Azerbaijan (an increase of 38 percent).

Azerbaijan’s main tourist markets of South Asia are India (27,000 tourists, increase of 80.2 percent) and Pakistan (19,000 tourists, increase of 24.4 percent), while the main tourist markets of Central Asia are Kazakhstan (20,000 tourists, with growth by 15.1 percent) and Turkmenistan (21,000 tourists, with an increase of 85 percent).

Mirsaid Ibrahimzade is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @MirsaidIbrahim1