TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Vice-President and Head of the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO) Massoud Soltanifar announced that the number of foreign tourists visiting Iran considerably increased last year.


Iran earned $6 billion revenues from tourism industry in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20), Soltanifar said on Wednesday.

Stressing the necessity for making efforts to increase the figure by 25 percent in current Iranian year, he said that the number of tourists visiting Iran and those investing in this industry increased significantly in the past year.

Soltanifar also said that implementation of 900 tourism projects are currently underway in different parts of the country with 195,000 billion rials in finance.

Last month, he expressed pleasure that more foreign tourists have been showing interest in traveling to Iran in recent months.

"Iran is among 10 attractive countries in terms of attracting tourists," Soltanifar said.

he noted that 4.8 million tourists visited Iran last year, and said, "Half of the foreign tourists visited the country's holy cities of Mashhad and Qom in the same period."

Soltanifar said that during the first half of the current Iranian year (March 21-September 22), the number of foreign tourists showed a 200 percent growth compared with last year's corresponding period.

He noted that 90 percent of the foreign tourists come to visit Iran with the purpose of natural, historical and religious tourism, adding, "Only 10 percent of foreign tourists come to Iran to attend conferences."

Soltanifar noted that Iran has over one million historical and natural sites, adding that only 31,100 or nearly three percent of them have been registered.

By Fars News Agency

 

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