Japanese tourists visit Iran after a two-year slump in arrivals
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A view of Khalid Nabi Cemetery in northeastern Iran\'s Golestan Province, in April 2018. (Photo by Mehr)
A group of Japanese tourists have traveled to Iran after a two-year standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic which ground the entire tourism sector to a halt worldwide.
Individual Japanese tourists have visited Iran on business trips or for seeing family or friends since Iranian calendar month of Aban (falling on October 23 to November 21), said Seyyed Abbas-Ali Emamieh, the Secretary of the Consortium of Incoming Tours from Korea and Japan at the Association of Air Transport and Tourist Agencies of Iran (AATTAI).
And group tours from Japan are also resuming after a two-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, added Emamieh.
Japanese tourists’ journey starts from northeastern Province of Golestan which includes visits to Miankaleh Peninsula and Ashooradeh Island, Emamieh said, noting, “We decided to start off with nature tours” due to the unstable conditions brought about by the pandemic and restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the virus.
Emamieh said that the Japanese tourists are scheduled to visit Provinces of Semnan, Mazandaran and Gilan, but did not provide any information on how long the journey lasts or when it has started.
He added that so far Japanese tourism sector has embarked on nature-based outbound tours, saying that such tours will set the scene for attracting other incoming tourists to Iran in the near future.
Mentioning the Gold week (a collection of four national holidays within seven days) in Japan which starts from April 29 to May 5, he said that travel activity is normally anticipated to peak during this holiday in Japan, however, as re-entry to Japan is still very cumbersome due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the number of oversea trips remains low.
Nonetheless, as travel restrictions are easing in Europe, Japan is expected to follow suit and is hoped to reopen to leisure travelers in summer, he said, adding, it is predicted that Japan will first lift COVID-19-related travel bans for neighboring countries with lower confirmed coronavirus cases and eliminate the bans for other countries as well after assessing the conditions.
ME
