VP: Iran’s Tourism Industry Flourishing

(FNA)- Iranian Vice-President and Head of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO) Massoud Soltanifar expressed pleasure that more foreign tourists are showing interest in traveling to the country in recent months.

Soltanifar said that the flow of the foreign tourists to Iran has witnessed a 200-percent growth.

"The visit of foreign tourists to Iran has witnesses a considerable and outstanding growth over past 8 months," he stated.

In relevant remarks in March, Soltanifar invited foreigners to visit Iran's various tourist destinations, stressing that the country enjoys high level of security for the foreign tourists.

"The security for tourists is in an ideal state in the country," Soltanifar said.

He pointed to the latest figures released by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), and said, "Tourists' requests to visit Iran in the past months has had a remarkable growth."

The senior official noted that the growth is the result of easing some of the anti-Iran sanctions in the past months which has taken place as a result of interim agreement reached between Tehran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) in November 2013.

On November 24, Iran and the five permanent United Nations Security Council members sealed a six-month Joint Plan of Action to lay the groundwork for the full resolution of the West’s decade-old dispute with Iran over the latter's nuclear energy program.