Number of China-Azerbaijan flights to increase in 2020
By Rasana Gasimova
China will launch another flight to Azerbaijan in 2020, the executive director of Chinese ETI-Holidays travel company, Guo Dongje, has said.
Guo Dongje said that the company is planning to launch flights from another Chinese city (besides Beijing) to Azerbaijan. He made the remarks during his meeting with the Executive Director of Azerbaijan Tourism Board, Florian Sengstschmid.
In his turn, Sengstschmid emphasized the importance of the Chinese market for the development of Azerbaijan’s tourism.
“While the number of Chinese tourists from to Azerbaijan was 13,000 in 2018, this figure reached 20,000 in January-September 2019,” he said.
As part of the meeting, the two sides agreed to hold joint trainings for Chinese tourist subagents. Some 5,000 subagents will participate in these trainings. The Board will conduct trainings to familiarize subagents with the tourism potential of Azerbaijan, its destinations, its hotels, tourist routes, attractions, ancient architectural monuments, as well as national cuisine.
“These trainings will play an important role in promoting Azerbaijan in the Chinese tourism market,” Guo Dongje said.
Presently, Baku-Beijing-Baku direct regular flights are carried out.
The direct flights between Azerbaijan and China as well as the Azerbaijani government's simplifying visa regime for Chinese tourists are of great importance for developing relations between the two countries in the field of tourism.
Since 2018, the official tourism representative office operating in China is actively working to introduce Azerbaijan's tourism potential in major Chinese cities.
Azerbaijan Tourism Board considers the Chinese market to be one of the priorities for attracting tourists. Since 2017, the tourism potential of Azerbaijan has been more actively promoted in this country.
In addition, Azerbaijan and Chinese tourism companies signed a cooperation agreement in April 2018. In first period, the companies specializing in health tourism are eager to attract 2,000 more tourists per year on the basis of this agreement.
Chinese experts say that about 1 million Chinese patients travel abroad every year for health tourism. They consider that their citizens will mostly like Azerbaijan’s Naftalan.
Recently, Azerbaijan and China signed a memorandum of understanding on simplifying group visits of Chinese tourists to Azerbaijan.
Recently, Azerbaijan signed a memorandum of understanding with the leading Chinese travel company ETI-Holidays (Beijing Huayuan International Travel Co., LTD) that envisages increasing the flow of Chinese tourists to Azerbaijan via the Beijing-Baku flight and further to other destinations in order to increase Baku’s transit capacity.
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