TEHRAN – Iran has joined the 25th China tourism exhibition, which opened to the public on Tuesday, with an eye on attracting more Chinese travelers to the Islamic Republic.

“This year’s exhibition is one of the most important tourism exhibitions in the world, which is held annually in Beijing late April,” IRNA quoted Farhad Baqerzadeh, a representative of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization in Beijing, as saying.

Beijing exhibit has been set up in an area of 4,000 square meters and is attended by travel associates from 85 countries, he said.

“The Chinese are interested in traveling to Iran and understanding our country, and this exhibition could have such a capacity to introduce Iran to them,” Hossein Khalifi, CHHTO representative in Shanghai, was quoted by IRNA as saying.

In 2017, over 100 million Chinese tourists traveled abroad, with Japan, Hong Kong, the U.S., South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, and France among their top destinations. However, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Iran fell short of expectations as just 80,000 tourists visited the country in the same year.

Insignificant numbers of Chinese restaurants, Chinese-language guides or even inappropriate lodging facilities are deemed to be among the main reasons behind the low number of Chinese tourist arrivals.

Some experts believe that part of this failure comes from inside Iran, because Chinese restaurants are scanty across the country while the cuisine is of high importance for majority of the Chinese people.

AFM/MQ/MG