TEHRAN – A total of twenty two tourism projects, worth 2,515 billion rials (some $60 million at the official rate of 42,000 rials) have been inaugurated in northern Mazandaran province during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year (started March 21, 2019).

The projects include building hotels and hotel apartments, travel agencies, eco-lodge guest houses as well as recreational and tourist facilities, IRNA quoted Mehran Hassani, the provincial deputy tourism chief, as saying on Saturday.

They also generated some 1,500 jobs directly or indirectly, the official added.

Last October, Iran’s tourism minister Ali-Asghar Mounesan announced that a total of 2,451 tourism-related projects worth 2,000 trillion rials (about $47 billion) were being implemented across the country.

“The country has potential to attract whatever investment is made in this [tourism] sector and now the tourism share of the country’s gross domestic product is about 2.9%, while a share of 4.5% is sought to be achieved. To attain such figure we need 21 billion dollars of investments in tourism arena,” Mounesan said.

Stretched along the Caspian Sea and Alborz mountain range, Mazandaran is a popular destination for domestic holidaymakers and it is home to more than 3500 villages and rural areas, hosted over three million night-stays during the previous Noruz holidays.

AFM/MG