The unrest has seriously damaged the tourism sector

According to Moj News Agency, Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Ezzatullah Zarghami stated in a gathering of reporters on Sunday evening after a meeting with students at Sharif University regarding the development of cultural relations and tourism: The recent unrest has had a negative effect on businesses. It’s not just cyberspace businesses. The situation of businesses that need virtual space and a certain amount of bandwidth is disturbed.

He added: The tourism sector has been seriously damaged in this period, due to the images that are sent abroad of unrest and lack of security, which show distorted security. While this is not the case and people are safe in the country.

The Minister of Cultural Heritage continued: In the situation that we have the World Cup in Qatar ahead of us and there were plans for the presence of World Cup tourists in Iran, according to the report, the activities of the agencies have been prevented. Even the people who were ready to travel to Iran and boarded the plane were talked to and a whole tour left the plane.

He added: This problem currently exists. We hope to pass this stage to reach Iran’s worthy position in tourism.

The need to solve the visa problem

Zarghami continued: Of course, we have serious problems in the tourism sector, and I will explain these problems soon. One of the issues in tourism is visa. We now have visa waivers with limited countries, we need to waive visas to progress in tourism.

The Minister of Cultural Heritage stated: Russia has a good capacity to receive tourists and we can supply the number of tourists on their behalf. But we have problems with visas and unilateral cancellation of visas, and the plan of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage to cancel visas with Russia did not go anywhere and was opposed by the government.

He clarified: If we want to improve tourism in the Islamic Republic, we must cancel visas with many countries.