TEHRAN – As the three-day Eid al-Fitr holidays officially came to an end following the two-week Nowruz holidays, statistics bring to light that Iran’s Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari lodged approximately 75,000 travelers in 30 days.

A provincial official related to the tourism department, on Sunday, provided a comprehensive overview of Nowruz travels’ statistics covering more than a month of service.

Highlighting the accommodation arrangements made to cater to the tourists, Hadi Qasemi-Nafchi outlined that 74,449 travelers were lodged across the province from March 14 to April 13.

The official further detailed the figure, stating that a total of 42,918 individuals chose to stay in official accommodation facilities along with 31,531 travelers who preferred to spend the night in unofficial and temporary lodges within the province.

Regarding the inspections, Qasemi-Nafchi mentioned that hundreds of monitoring visits to tourism facilities were conducted to ensure holidaymakers were being catered to deservedly in the course of spring holidays.

Providing insight into the diverse array of sites frequented by spring travelers, the official outlined that natural and historical sites ranked first and second, followed by handmade and religious attractions.

“Since March 14, a whole number of 107,441 visits have been recorded to historical, cultural, and touristic spots within the province,” Qasemi-Nafchi noted.

Chahrmahal-Bakhtiari as one of the various destinations in the west side of Iran, the ones which are generally lesser-known to potential sightseers and vacationers, is seeking to absorb travelers with an eye toward fostering tourism provincewide.

Over the past couple of years, western Iranian provinces have held several meetings to discuss ways to expand tourism, bringing together local officials, hoteliers, travel agents, and tour operators from provinces of Lorestan, Ilam, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh-Boyerahmad, Kermanshah, Kordestan, Hamedan, Zanjan and East Azarbaijan, amongst others.

“Introducing the lesser-known or less-favored travel destinations is part of the ministry’s policies,” an official with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts on September 30, 2021, noted, “and paying more attention to the western axis of the country is in line with those strategies.”

“The west axis is our concern for tourism, which we intend to raise at [various] international tourism conferences,” the official stated.

Qasemi added that off-the-beaten-track destinations are becoming more popular as a new trend worldwide. “Tourism has diversified and different excursions can be offered to tourists, so we have to introduce new tourism routes.”

In July 2021, UNESCO registered Iran’s Uramanat cultural landscape to its list of world heritage sites. Stretched on the slopes of Sarvabad county, and shared between the provinces of Kordestan and Kermanshah in western Iran, the scenic landscape embraces hundreds of villages, 106,000 hectares of land, and 303,000 hectares of surrounding properties.

It boasts dense and step-like rows of houses in a way that the roof of each house forms the yard of the upper one, a feature that adds to its charm and attractiveness.

The Islamic Republic expects to reap a bonanza from its numerous tourist spots such as bazaars, museums, mosques, bridges, bathhouses, madrasas, mausoleums, churches, towers, and mansions.