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Abulfas Garayev: â€œTourist movement to Azerbaijan forecasted to increase by 10-12 percent this yearâ€

12 March 2009 10:26 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ulkar Gasimovaâ€“APA. 11 tourism information centers were established in various regions of Azerbaijan, Minister of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan Abulfas Garayev told journalists, APA reports. The minister said the centers would provide high-quality tourist travels to Azerbaijan. â€œThe guidebooks were published about the regions where the information centers located. The centers will organize extension courses for the tourism managers. It is impossible today to develop tourism without IT. The foreign tourists can get information about the hotels on global network. We thought about that and now we are happy for realization of this project. There are different forms of this project. We observe that number of entered subjects is increasing year by yearâ€.
Abulfas Garayev said the tourist movement to Azerbaijan was increased by 40 percent last year. â€œIt is unique indication in the world. We welcome the increase of tourist movement, which is coming form the international events organized in Azerbaijan particularly. One million 899 thousand foreigners arrived in Azerbaijan last year. It is very great success. I believe that this figure will not be reduced because Baku was declared the Islamic Culture Capital 2009 and will be increased by 10-12 percentâ€. The minister of culture and tourism said global financial crisis had no negative impact on the tourism in Azerbaijan. â€œWe didnâ€™t cut any project carried out by the tourism companies because of financial crisis. Of course, it is positive case that hotel rate dropped. Sometimes we receive complaints about the high prices in the hotels. I told them that the market will regulate itself and the concurrency will be extended. The low prices will attract more peopleâ€.