It is planned to increase the number of foreign tourists traveling to Azerbaijan to 4 million and the number of local tourists to 6 million by 2026, Chairman of the State Tourism Agency (STA) Fuad Naghiyev said during his speech at the event dedicated to the one-year activity of the Association of Travel Agencies of Azerbaijan (ATAA), Report informs.
"The number of tourists coming to the country after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has increased. 1,344 million tourists visited Azerbaijan in January-August of this year," he noted.
According to him, the share of the tourism sector in the gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to rise by 1.5 times compared to 2019 in the next 4 years: "In general, we are thinking of raising the share of the tourism sector in the GDP by 20% every year. It is also planned to increase spending by tourists to 10 billion manats ($5.88 billion). ATAA also has a huge responsibility to achieve all these. I hope that we will reach these goals together."