Official underlines rise in number of health tourists to visit Iran

The number of foreign health tourists visiting Iran will considerably increase in the near future, a senior Iranian official announced.

“Over 500,000 health tourists are likely to visit Iran in the coming months,” Health Ministry Official Jalal Naeli said, addressing Health Tourism Conference in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad on Thursday.

In October, Iranian Vice-President and Director of the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO) Masoud Soltanifar announced that the number of foreign tourists visiting Iran considerably increased last year.

“Iran earned $6 billion in revenues from tourism industry in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20),” Soltanifar said at the time.

Stressing the necessity for making efforts to increase the figure by 25 percent in current Iranian year, he said that the number of tourists visiting Iran and those investing in this industry increased significantly in the past year.

Soltanifar also said that implementation of 900 tourism projects are currently underway in different parts of the country with 195,000 billion rials in finances.