Last year, Azerbaijan tourism industry was boosted by 2.25 million tourists. One third of them were Russians, as reported by the State Statistics Committee.
“Last year Azerbaijan was visited by 2.248 million tourists, which is 12.1% more than in 2015,” the report said.
The majority of tourists in the country were citizens of neighboring states. In particular, Russians accounted for 33.1% of the total number of tourists. Georgia came in second with 22.5%, followed by Turkey (14%) and Iran (11.1%). The remaining 19.3% were tourists from other countries.
Compared to 2015, last year saw significant growth in Azerbaijan tourism inflow from various countries.
The number of Iraqi tourists increased thirty times, while twenty-two times more UAE citizens were registered. The number of tourists from Saudi Arabia increased 10.2 times. Qatar also increased inflow, 5.5 times.
Iran tourism inflow increased by 66.2%, Egyptian by 51.8% and 44.5% more Chinese visitors visited the Asian country, the State Statistics Committee stated.
According to the data, in 2016 the number of tourists from the European Union dropped by 16.6% to 91.1 thousand people. On the contrary, the number of tourists from the CIS countries increased by 8.1% last year – to 868 thousand people.