Around 6 million tourists expected to visit Kurdistan Region in 2022

Around 6 million tourists are expected to visit Kurdistan Region in 2022, the Head of the Region's Tourism Board announced on Saturday.

Amal Jalal, Head of the Kurdistan Region's Tourism Board, told PUKmedia that tourism was negatively affected by the outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020.

She also said that the number of tourists visiting the Region's tourist destinations is increasing annually and that it is likely that 6 million tourists will arrive during the current year and 8 million tourists in 2023.

"According to our plan, the number of tourists will reach 20 million in 2030," she said, stressing that the plan includes pricing competition between the Kurdistan Region and neighboring countries to increase the number of tourists.

The first half of 2022 has already witnessed the arrival of over 600,000 tourists. Over 315,000 tourists came to the Kurdistan Region during Eid al-Fitr, while the number was 300,000 during Eid al-Adha.

Due to its cooler temperature compared to the rest of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to the Kurdistan Region around the time of the holidays annually, mostly from southern and central governorates.

Tourism has been the focus of the Kurdistan Regional Government and a booming sector in the Kurdistan Region in recent years. It was hit by the coronavirus in 2020, but it slowly began to revive last year. 

Millions of tourists have visited the Region since 2021 with over 3.1 million arriving in just the first half of this year. 



PUKmedia