Shift in political climate brings GCC tourists back to Iran

Iran wants to increase its numbers of tourists to 10 million from just four million in 2012. Already 1.2 million visitors from the GCC and Iraq have traveled to the Islamic Republic in the past 10 months but Iran wants more.

An Iranian couple take a picture on Kish Island in southern Iran on July 6, 2013.

TEHRAN // Iran’s government hopes to attract more GCC tourists to its beaches, ski slopes and ancient cities as part of an ambitious plan to become a global tourism hub.

The election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani as president in August last year had an immediate and positive effect on tourism, according to tour operators in the country. A plan to streamline the visa process for most countries, including GCC members, is expected to further bolster the numbers.

More than 1.2 million tourists from the GCC and Iraq visited Iran in the last 10 months, an increase of more than 50 per cent on the previous year, said Manouchehr Jahanian, a top aide to the head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organisation.

GCC visitors are central to Iranian tourism, with the country proving a popular destination for tourists from Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Mr Jahanian said.

But during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eight years as president, relations between the Gulf Arab states and Tehran cooled and the number of visitors dropped as a result, tour operators said.

When Mr Rouhani took office his cabinet set out to boost tourism through reconciliation with the world and specifically the GCC.

In November, Mr Rouhani’s government reached a landmark deal with western countries that would curb Iran’s nuclear enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief. Seeking to capitalise on the goodwill, Iran foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, visited in early December the UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar and repeatedly called for joint efforts to resolve issues and promote regional stability.

“Our tourism industry was always influenced by political developments,” said Mozaffar Sanaei, 47, a managing director at the Orient Star travel agency in Tehran. “President Rouhani and the foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s attitude and his current trips to GCC changed the cooperation channel into a more useful one.”

Mr Sanaei is confident that Iranian tourism is about to get a big lift, and said that top hotels in popular cities such Isfahan and Shiraz were already fully booked for the spring high season.

“I can easily predict that the number of tourists visiting Iran from GCC and particularly UAE booms from April 2014, which is the beginning of the tourism high season in Iran, until the end of summer” said Mr Sanaei, who has worked in the industry for 20 years.

Underscoring the shift in relations, the UAE-based Rotana group announced in December that it would set up shop in Iran, the first international hotel group to do so since the 1979 Islamic revolution terminated all foreign hotel contracts.

Rotana has hotel projects in Tehran and in the pilgrimage city of Mashhad, which are expected to be completed in 2015.

The three major UAE airlines, Emirates, Etihad and Air Arabia, already have regular flights to Tehran, Mashhad and Shiraz.

“The biggest groups of tourists we had in 2012 were made up of just two or three people. Right after presidential election, we had some groups of 20 up to 60 people,” said Amin Riyasati, 27, a licensed tour guide from the city of Shiraz who added that he had his first ever clients from the UAE this month.

Raffi Vartanian, a US citizen, who has lived in Dubai for eight years and works in logistics, visited Iran last year.

“As a UAE resident, I have been to other GCC countries but never on holiday, only for work. Part of Iran’s appeal was that you can get to a whole other world with rich historical sites, beauty, food and people in less time than it takes to get to Kuwait,” he said.

Iran is already known as a religious tourism destination for its holy sites, including the shrines of Imam Reza in Mashhad and Fatima Masumeh in Qom.

But Iran’s time-consuming visa policy has hindered travellers who have wanted to travel to the country to see its 16 Unesco World Heritage sites such as Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid empire regarded as one of the world’s most magnificent ancient sites, and the historic city of Isfahan.

As one of Mr Rouhani’s early priorities, Iranian officials planned to ease visa requirements for most foreign visitors in an attempt to increase the number of tourists to Iran to 10 million a year, up from four million in 2012.

Once the new regulations are implemented in the coming months, tourists from most countries, excluding the UK and US, will be able to pick up their visas on arrival.

But tour operators are already upbeat because the number of tourists has risen considerably this winter compared with last year.

“Last week alone we had two families from Kuwait and Dubai, who came specifically to ski at the Dizin ski resort just north of Tehran,” said Assad Hassani, the owner of Niknam travel agency in Tehran.

Tehran, despite being overcrowded and polluted, has also proved to be a hit with foreign visitors.

“Seventy per cent of the tourists, who visit Iran enter the country from Tehran and they are surprised that the capital is so vast and modern. They love the northern part of Tehran. They have a totally different view from the moment they arrive and Tehran hypnotised them positively,” said Mr Riyasati, the tour guide.