TEHRAN – A delegation of Turkish investors and tour operators will follow up on the issue of building ten five-star hotels in Iran during a visit to the country within the next two months, Iran’s tourism chief says.

“Construction of 10 hotels across Iran by Turkish investors was one of the issues we discussed,” Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization Director Ali-Asghar Mounesan told CHTN on Friday.

“Turkish investors and tour operators are set to visit Iran in the next two months so that we can also seize the opportunity to introduce them investment capacities and opportunities in the country,” he added.

We can also seize the opportunity to introduce them investment capacities and opportunities in the country, Mounesan added.

Mounesan held talks with several Turkish officials during his last week’s travel to Turkey as part of a high-profile delegation, which included first vice-president Es’haq Jahangiri, transport and urban development minister Abbas Akhoundi, and central bank governor Valiollah Seif.

In a meeting with Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Numan Kurtulmuş, Mounesan urged implementation of previous agreements signed between the two neighboring countries, many of them have not been implemented yet.

“We are determined to increase the arrival rate of Turkish tourists to the country and we need to get closer to the balance with the help of Turkish side,” Mounesan explained.

Last year, a Turkish tourism ministry official announced that the country’s investors are allowed to build at least 10 hotels Iranian cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz and Mashhad under the terms of an agreement signed during a Turkish delegation’s visit to Tehran.

Moreover, the two countries agreed organize joint tours for the Asian market that would include visiting cities in southeast Turkey and Iran, based on the agreement.

Seeking a balance between inbound and outbound passengers, Mounesan said: “Some two million Iranians are going to Turkey annually, but only 400 thousand Turkish tourists set foot in Iran.”

The number of Iranian travelers to Istanbul has followed an upward trend in the recent years, ranking second after Germans when it comes to the distribution of tourists visiting the Turkish city by country.

Iranians account for 7.5 percent of all tourists arrivals to Istanbul, and numerically they may soon surpass that of Germans, who make up for 9.4 percent of the visitors to the city, Daily Sabah reported in August.

Iran ranked seventh in 2013 in the distribution of tourists visiting Istanbul, while the position jumped to second after in 2014, 2015, 2016 and the first six months of 2017. The number of Germans visiting Istanbul in the first six months of this year stood at 403,235, the report added.

AFM/MG