TEHRAN –Some 27 hotels and 65 apartment hotels are being constructed across the northern province of Mazandaran, adding 71,000 beds to the province’s hospitality sector. 

These accommodation centers are expected to boost tourism infrastructure in the region and make the lush green province a main tourism hub of the country, said Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Minister Ali-Asghar Mounesan on the sidelines of his two-day visit to the province, CHTN reported on Tuesday. 

In the course of the minister’s visit, 78 tourism-related projects worth over nine trillion rials ($214 million at the official exchange rate of 42,000 rials per dollar) were planned to be inaugurated throughout Mazandaran province, the report added. 

Last September, Mounesan announced that over 2,400 tourism-related projects, including the construction of 500 hotels, are being implemented across the country with a total estimated cost of 1,370 trillion rials (around $32 billion).

This volume of investment indicates that investors recognize the growing tourism sector as a new economy in the country and have high hopes for it, he added. 

Pointing to the foreign arrivals as one of the important indicators of the tourism sector he said that 8.6 million foreign nationals visited the country during the Iranian calendar year 1398 (ended March 20, 2020), almost a 200 percent increase compared to 4.8 million during the Iranian calendar year 1395 (March 2016-March 2017).

He also noted that ecotourism has developed rapidly and the number of eco-lodge units increased from 400 units in 2017 to over 2,000 units at the beginning of 2020.

Stretched along the Caspian Sea and Alborz mountain range, Mazandaran is a popular destination for domestic holidaymakers and it is home to more than 3,500 villages and rural areas, hosting millions of domestic night-stays in a year.

ABU/AFM