Kurdistan Region has over 3 thousand tourist places: Tourism Board

Kurdistan 10:23 AM - 2021-05-04

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According to a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Tourism Board, there are currently more than 3,100 different tourist sites in the Kurdistan Region, 2,900 of which are tourist destinations, and 200 of them are heritage, archaeology, and resorts.

 

Nadir Rusty, the spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s tourism board, told the Kurdish Kurdistani Nwe Newspaper: "Tourist destinations in the Kurdistan Region are hotels, motels, restaurants, tourist villages, and fast-food restaurants which are 610 hotels, 319 motels, 2,118 restaurants, 52 tourist villages."

 

According to Rusty, over 480 tourism companies are currently registered in the Kurdistan region, where 95% are taking tourists outside to foreign countries and 5% of them bring tourists to the Kurdistan Region by group and the numbers are changing continuously.

 

He also said that due to the spread of coronavirus, the number of tourists arriving in the Kurdistan region in 2020 was 78% less than in 2019, where in 2020, only 845,000 tourists came to the Kurdistan Region, but in 2019 3,789,983 tourists came, but so far no tourism statistics for 2021 are available.

 

Nadir Rusty explained that following the decisions of the KRG, our borders with other Iraqi cities are currently closed. Before Ramadan, there were some tourist arrivals but it was a small number of people and the arrival of the tourist groups on Fridays and holidays were banned for not creating crowds. 

 

He pointed out that in the past years, more than 100 Iraqi tourist companies have brought tourist groups from southern and central Iraq to the Kurdistan Region.

 

Regarding studying in tourism, the spokesman of the Tourism Board said: "Currently, there are tourism departments in 5 universities of the Kurdistan region and they are known to us, as there are also 5 tourism institutes and 3 tourism high schools in Kurdistan."

 

Regarding the identity of foreign tourists coming to the Kurdistan Region, Rusty said: "Tourists from countries such as Iran, Turkey, Germany, and other European countries and China come to Kurdistan region, but now due to the spread of coronavirus, their numbers are very few."

 

Kurdistan Region has many beautiful tourism destinations such as the Dukan lake in Sulaymaniyah, the Erbil Citadel in Erbil, Amedi in Duhok, and many more mesmerizing places. 

 

 

 

PUKmedia