TEHRAN - First Vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri on Monday declared a strategic plan for the development of the national tourism industry.

The official declaration gives all related bodies, organizations, and institutes a clear mandate to assume defined duties to bolster the country’s tourism sector through coordinated policymaking by executive bodies, academics, and the private sector.

The strategic plan is based on Article 100 of the Fifth Five-Year National Development Plan (2016-2021), and it pursues sustainable tourism development through coordinated, inter-sectoral, and integrated policies with the cooperation of executive bodies, university professors, the private sector activists, according to a governmental press release.

The plan also touches upon elements such as tourism management, business environment issues, tourism infrastructure, manpower, cultural concerns, and issues relating to foreign travelers, as well as spheres of advertising and marketing.

Defining main policies in the field of tourism, creating the ground for developing a national tourism development plan, implementing goals most dynamically and efficiently possible, a more competitive environment, as well as empowering local tourism, natural and cultural tourism are among the other objectives of the strategic plan.

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus has plunged the travel and tourism industry and economy in the global scene over that past couple of months as passenger traffic on airlines and hotel occupancy rates have fallen off a cliff compared to the same periods previous years. However, some experts expect Iran to achieve a tourism boom after coronavirus contained, believing its impact would be temporary and short-lived for a country that ranked the third fastest-growing tourism destination in 2019.

Iran expects to reap a bonanza from its numerous tourist spots such as bazaars, museums, mosques, bridges, bathhouses, madrasas, mausoleums, churches, towers, and mansions, of which 24 being inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Under the 2025 Tourism Vision Plan, it aims to increase the number of tourist arrivals from 4.8 million in 2014 to 20 million in 2025. The latest available data show eight million tourists visited the Islamic Republic during the first ten months of the past Iranian calendar year (started March 21, 2019).

AFM/MG