Visit of the Minister of Culture, Handicrafts, and Tourism of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart with the aim of attending the annual summit of ancient civilization countries.
In addition to participating in the summit, he had meetings with the Chinese Minister of Culture and Tourism, with the Greek and Armenian Tourism Ministers, and with Chinese media outlets, including China's state-run TV company CCTV and the Global Times and China Daily News.
Moonesan pointed out Iran's high capacity to attract tourists from other countries, including China, saying that Iran is highly competitive in terms of price with other countries and that Tehran's strategy is to further focus on the Chinese market to attract more Chinese tourists to Iran.
One of the most prominent voluntary measures taken by Iran and its effects is visa-free for the Chinese tourists. Many Chinese tourists travel to other countries every year and in different seasons. We may argue that most travel costs to other countries are borne by Chinese tourists and travelers.
This is in spite of the fact that the Iranian market has not yet been able to attract large numbers of Chinese tourists. However, the recent lifting of visa barriers will naturally have an impact in the years ahead and the Minister's visit to our country was very important for China.
It has been suggested that China will allocate 4% of China's tourism capacity which would result in the visit by nearly 6 million Chinese to Iran per year. Iran is still far from attracting such a large number of tourists, but efforts are being made in this regard and have been focused on the Chinese market and a good future for this sector is being envisaged in Iran.
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