“Some 150 million Chinese visited many countries and we want to host two million tourists from China each year,” said Ali Asqar Munesan, head of the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of Iran on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, the Iranian government agreed to drop visa requirement for the Chinese tourists. The move is aimed to increase the number of the Chinese who want to visit Iran and to raise the government’s non-oil revenues as well.
Munesan called the decision “an effective step” to help increase the Chinese tourists.
“We should believe that tourism industry is income generating more than the oil industry and that sanctions do not work on the tourism sector,” he said, adding that 52,000 Chinese tourists visited Iran last year.
9218**1416
Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish
IRNA English