People’s trips increased by 40%

Ezzatullah Zarghami announced a 40% increase in people’s domestic travel compared to the pre-coronavirus era, and further challenged the architecture and restorations of these years and said: The damages of architecture and restoration after the revolution should be announced loudly, even though It costs me to say it.
The Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, who gave an overview of his one-year performance report in a television program, saying that my view of the ministry is project-oriented, and that’s why we are looking to implement a few projects and take a few steps forward. , added: In the first step, we must define the issues and move problem-oriented. That’s why I felt from the beginning that we can’t make a decision until we get the opinion of the experts and consult them. Therefore, we had specialized meetings with experts, including holding a meeting with cultural heritage veterans. Like this, specialized meetings have been held in the field of tourism and handicrafts. Now we are determined to solve the 20 problems ahead. Most of our issues are cross-departmental and things move forward step by step.

The trip of 3 million foreign tourists to Iran in less than a year

He listed the resumption of Iranian visas after a one-and-a-half-year suspension since the outbreak of the Corona virus as one of the measures and achievements of his ministry and said: This issue was not resolved and there was concern due to the spread of the Corona virus, but with the support of the president, the issuance Visas were resumed and 2,900,000 people entered Iran in less than a year. This amount is growing and increasing.

Zarghami added: According to the forecasts of the World Tourism Organization, tourism will return to the normal state before the corona virus by the end of 2024. This is despite the fact that we returned to normal earlier than the forecasts of international organizations. Also, in domestic tourism, we had a 40% increase in domestic tourists compared to before the outbreak of Corona.

He added: Of course, this year’s Nowruz we were faced with a travel tsunami, and fortunately, with the cooperation of the Travel Service Coordination Headquarters, which has 23 member organizations, we are witnessing the prosperity of domestic tourism and coordination. Before that, the hotels were not doing well, but now they are back to their boom times.

We coordinate with the Ministry of Information

The Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts also pointed out the obstacles facing the development of foreign tourism and said: Designing the Iranophobia project and presenting a negative image of Iran in some media is one of the obstacles to attract foreign tourists. This is while we have many relative advantages and facilities that none of the countries in the region have. For this reason, they do everything they can to create an obstacle for the development of tourism. Some also help to create these obstacles. Mr. Younesi – the former Minister of Information – announced the arrest of a group whose activity was to create an obstacle in Iran’s tourism, because Arab countries want to have their own income, some of these countries are also working hard to promote their tourism, as For example, Qatar has now spent 200 billion dollars on tourism and using the opportunity of the World Cup.

Reminding that the priority of Iran and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts is to strengthen relations with neighboring countries, he added: We are pursuing the project of low-cost land travel with neighboring countries. Besides that, pilgrimage tourism is a special advantage of our tourism, and we have special plans in this regard, and we signed the final memorandum of understanding with various institutions, including Faraja, with the aim of developing and promoting tourism as much as possible, and a memorandum of understanding has been signed with 11 countries, including Malaysia and Azerbaijan. .

The Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts stated: Iranophobia is an important issue, and that’s why we are looking to deal with this project. The Americans are making efforts in this regard, that’s why we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Organization of Islamic Culture and Communications, and now all cultural advisers are practically representatives of this ministry, and one of their missions is to counter Iranophobia and introduce Iran.

Emphasizing that we should not close the doors of tourism due to fear of a specific issue, he said: We have good coordination with the Ministry of Information; Because the duty of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts is to solve problems in the way of tourism and create interaction with different institutions.

Regarding the measures taken in the cultural heritage sector, Zarghami said: Cultural heritage is the root of our civilization. We rank 9th in the field of tangible cultural heritage and 7th in the field of intangible heritage, and 26 works have been registered globally. The relative advantage of Iran’s tourism is its history, civilization and nature. Compared to the wealth that we have, we are far behind in the ability to store, display and introduce works. Of course, I believe that museums should go out of the static state and become an active museum. Currently, we have more than 800 museums, but we still have 10% of historical objects and documents.

He went on to say: We have an unknown phenomenon called the reservoir. I explained to people that we have valuable objects stored in tanks that we need to build multiple museums.

The budget for restoration and protection is almost zero

The Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts reminded: In Iran, we have 35 thousand registered works, but our restoration and maintenance budget is almost zero compared to this amount of works and sites, and for each of our historical works, it is almost 300 thousand tomans a day, which is the daily wage of a He does not work either. Of course, the construction budget has grown by 77%, which is twice the government’s construction budget. The provincial trips that Mr. President also goes to for the year 1401 and 1402 are estimated to be three thousand billion Tomans.

Zarghami then mentioned the issue of launching the cultural heritage charity association and added: We invite all benefactors and interested parties who are ready to help in the preservation and restoration of historical monuments. People should be helped. Of course, we also did good things, for example, we don’t allow construction in the arena. I have seen the problems closely during the provincial trips and I give people the right sometimes, but we solve these problems and preserve the cultural heritage with this prosperity.

He considered skilled restoration forces to be one of the advantages of Iran’s cultural heritage and added: In meeting with the ministers of some countries, they requested to send restoration forces to restore the historical monuments of those countries.

The Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts said: With all the problems we have in the budget, we will budget for all historical buildings, even the restoration of churches. We have three world-registered churches and the restoration of churches and fire temples is underway. Mr. Fuladi is a cleric and he is 90 years old. He has been restoring historical buildings since he was 10 years old and has restored both the mosque and the fire temple. When I asked him about the motivation for restoring the fire temple, he answered me with arguments from the Holy Quran.

He went on to say: Some people wanted to create two poles in the field of cultural heritage, knowingly or unknowingly, and make a distinction between ancient Iran and Iran after Islam, but this is not really the case, and Iran before Islam and after Islam are not different.

730 monuments were damaged in the summer flood

Zarghami mentioned the damage to historical monuments in the flood and added: I gave a report to the government in the recent flood. The initial estimate was that about 730 of our buildings were damaged and 2 thousand billion Tomans were damaged. We need to make careful investment to protect these works.

Referring to the challenges of architecture and restoration of historical buildings, the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts stated: One of the pathologies that we must do is the state of architecture after the revolution. Unfortunately, after the revolution, our architecture was damaged. Maybe these words will cost me, you see the city theater with that architecture, next to which a mosque was built, which has no sign of Iranian architecture. We have problems in the field of architecture after the revolution, we must announce it loudly and we must compensate. I gave orders in this regard from the first day, and the deputy of cultural heritage is following plans in this regard.

He also said about ecotours: Ecotours are good capacities and we are multiplying them. Paying attention to different aspects of ecotourism and their capacities can compensate for our lack of accommodation. In addition, contrary to the opinion of some, ecotourism does not harm the culture.

Zarghami stated: This ministry was known as a second-rate institution in the past years. Sometimes the importance of its missions, including tourism, was discussed, but no importance was given to it, perhaps the reason was that tourism money did not reach the government directly, but the fact is that attention to tourism creates employment.