Azerbaijan to prepare tourist guides with international status

By Azernews

By Leman Mammadova

The Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) and the Uzbek Tourism Training Center will jointly prepare tourist guides with international status.

AzTA and Uzbekistan's Tourism Training Center agreed to train professional guides with international status in both countries, the Association told Trend.

This agreement was reached during the meeting of the chairman of the Association Nahid Bagirov with the delegation of Uzbek Tourism Training Center headed by director of the Center Elena Golisheva.

The visit of the Uzbek delegation to Azerbaijan was aimed at the mutual exchange of information, the mutual acquaintance with the methodology of training for the preparation of guides conducted in two countries, training programs and schedules for conducting training courses in both countries, as well as an agreement on joint training sessions.

Azerbaijan enjoys a great potential for the development of tourism. Nature, climate, historical monuments, cuisine, rich culture of the people and other factors lay the foundation for the development of many areas of tourism. There are wide opportunities for Azerbaijan to be recognized as a tourist destination in the world.

Azerbaijan is among the developing countries in the field of tourism, occupying the 39th place among 148 countries in terms of global competitiveness in tourism.

It is noteworthy that in 2018, as many as 2,849,600 tourists from 196 countries arrived in Azerbaijan, showing a 5.7 percent increase compared to 2017.

According to the State Statistics Committee, 30.9 percent came from Russia, 21.4 percent from Georgia, 10.2 percent from Turkey, 8.5 percent from Iran, 3.3 percent from the United Arab Emirates, 2.6 percent from Saudi Arabia, 2.4 percent from Iraq, 2 percent from Ukraine, 1.4 percent from Israel, 17.2 percent - citizens of other countries, 0.1 percent - stateless persons.

In 2018, there was a significant increase in the number of visitors from the Gulf countries (excluding the United Arab Emirates and Iran).

In January 2019, 191,600 foreigners and stateless people from 143 countries visited Azerbaijan (a 2.9 percent increase compared to January 2018).

The largest increase in foreign tourists is observed among those arriving from Georgia with an increase of 22 percent. Other markets where significant growth was achieved are South Asia and Central Asia. The number of tourists from these regions increased by 60.9 percent and 35.4 percent respectively.

Uzbekistan is located in the "heart" of Central Asia and has tremendous opportunities in the field of tourism. The country has 7,300 cultural heritage sites, which is more than 90 percent of all historical monuments in the region. More than 500 of them are included in tourist routes.

The implementation of a large number of activities contributed to a sharp increase in the attractiveness of Uzbekistan for tourists.

If in 2017, as many as 2.6 million tourists entered Uzbekistan, in 2018 their total number increased to 5.3 million (a 99 percent increase). By 2025, it is expected that the number of tourists will increase to 9 million.