Fancy a hot spa? Why not Sara’ein in northwest Iran? You could combine the trip with skiing at one of the many resorts in the Alborz mountains. Or perhaps you would prefer mountain trekking and visits to colorfully clad nomads in their tents? Then head for the mountains and lush valleys of the Zagros range in western Iran.
Or, if you crave sun in the winter and find Dubai a little – well – plastic, Iran’s largely unspoiled southern coastline offers blue seas, freshly netted fish and temperatures in the middle 20s throughout January and February.
Museum buffs can take in Tehran’s jewelry museum, home to the Peacock throne and set in an underground vault behind the central bank, while art lovers will savor works by Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, Van Gogh, Picasso and Henry Moore at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Visitors to Iran have for centuries raved about the 17th century architecture of the Naghsh-e Jahan square in Esfahan, the 10th century congregational mosque at Na’in, or the 3rd century Sassanian palace and fire tower at Firuzabad. Lovers of handwoven carpets have long haggled over cups of samovar-brewed tea in the bazaars of Tehran, Hamadan and Shiraz. To those who go there, the sheer variety of Iran surprises. “It’s a continent, not a country,” the former Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim Jaaferi, once observed.
Why then is Iran’s tourism industry such a stripling? Image, of course: the country has the wrong one. “You can sum up the foreign view of Iran as hot deserts, compulsory hijab for women and angry mobs burning US flags,” says one tourism professional. “That’s not many people’s idea of a fun holiday destination.”
Further deterrent. However vividly wrong a picture tourists may have, figures from the World Tourist Organization, supplied by the Iranian government, show a steadily upward trend of tourists and other visitors, from 154,000 in 1990, to 1.34 million in 2000, and 1.66 million in 2004. Western visitors, many of them high-income professionals, started returning to Iran in the 1990s as stability returned after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the 1980-88 war with Iraq. But the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington led to an immediate drop in Westerners coming, and international pressure over Tehran’s nuclear program and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fiery statements over Israel have further deterred Europeans and Americans.
The Iranian parliament’s recent decision to fingerprint American tourists, in response to Washington’s fingerprinting of Iranians, was more bad news. “It’s the final straw,” says one tour guide. “People are already angry that it takes a long time to get through the airport.”
The US has issued a travel advisory warning its citizens to “carefully consider the risks of travel to Iran” as “American citizens may be subject to harassment or kidnapping” and “some areas of the country, including the Baluchistan border area near Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Kurdish northwest of the country, and areas near the Iraqi border, are not considered safe.”
The experience of most visitors is, however, entirely different to the alarmist US government advisory. Says guide Mahmoud Daryaie, who has clocked up many miles with Pasargad, a leading Tehran tour company, “Sometimes, Americans are wary for a few days, but when they realize how welcome they are in Iran, they quickly relax.” The official Iranian position is also somewhat at variance with that of the US: Ahmadinejad himself opposed the decision to fingerprint American visitors on the grounds that Iran’s quarrel was with the Bush administration rather than with the American people.
Brave face. None of this can save the Iranian tourism business, which has taken a battering since 9/11 and, with Western governments and media continuing to emphasize the country’s dangers, has slim chances of recovering tourist numbers. “I would estimate the number of Western tourists at no more than 30 percent of the level before 9/11,” one tourism company says. Those operators still in business are putting a brave face on it. UK-based Persian Voyages, whose tours include spells with Qashqai nomads and trips to see wild boar and gazelles in Iran’s national parks, is inquiring with the Tehran authorities about nuclear plants after Ahmadinejad said they would be open for visitors.
“We’re still waiting to hear,” said Nasrin Harris, the managing director of Persian Voyages, who put up an “Iran Nuclear Sites Tour” above the company’s stall at the recent World Travel Market exhibition in London.
One favorable trend for the industry is the rising number of Arab tourists in recent years, due partly to the difficulty of visiting shrines in Iraq and partly to the growing suspiciousness exhibited toward Middle Easterners in Europe. Hotels in Esfahan report increasing bookings from Kuwaitis and Bahrainis, mainly Shi’ite Muslims who come for a few days’ shopping after a pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Reza in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
But some hoteliers complain that these new arrivals are not the better-off Arabs who traditionally spend the summer in Lebanon or Syria, and that their spending power cannot make up for that of the Europeans who no longer come.
Iranian tour operators lament the limited support from the government – despite its professed intentions. The current five-year plan envisages a total of 20 million tourists coming to the country by the end of 2010, with officials emphasizing the lure of Iran’s historical and archeological sites. But three years after the state Tourist Organization drew up a scheme for improved facilities – including upgrading state-owned hotels and transport links – progress has been slow. Operators are also skeptical of the government’s ability to deliver on its scheme to issue visas via the Internet.
Silk Road tourism. Neither is there much optimism in the industry over calls from Ahmadinejad to encourage tourists from the wider – and mainly Sunni – Islamic world. Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh, the head of Iran’s delegation to September’s tourism meeting of the Islamic conference, announced a series of initiatives including attracting young Muslims and arranging an Islamic food festival in Kish island in the Persian Gulf. Iran has also used its observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – which includes Russia, China and the countries of central Asia – to look at the possibilities for cooperation in developing what is called “Silk Road” tourism – the opening up of the mysterious but inaccessible hinterland to visitors, particularly cities such as Samarkand, Tashkent and Almaty that historically were a part of the ancient trade route.
But industry insiders say such plans, while welcome, will have a limited effect unless the government tackles wider inefficiencies in the Iranian economy that continue to have as much a detrimental effect on tourism as they do on other sectors. “The three main problems are nepotism, favoritism and corruption,” notes one operator.
Iran’s poor banking system is a good example of the practical problems still to be overcome. The lack of ATM access to overseas accounts and the absence of credit card facilities keep tourist wallets thin. A proposed scheme for visitors to buy temporary debit cards on arrival at the airport came to nothing because retailers and hotels can’t process them and it would have cost too much to bring them into line. Some carpet sellers in Esfahan, anxious to encourage impulse purchases, process credit card transactions through Dubai, but the practice is limited and rare anywhere else in the country. None of the leading hotels in Tehran take plastic.
With so many obstacles in the way of inbound tourism, the growth area in Iranian tourism is outbound, as more and more Iranians catch the bug of foreign travel. Alireza Pahlavani is one tour manager who has switched emphasis, putting aside for now his love of introducing foreigners to the jewels of Iranian architecture to instead taking his fellow Iranians to Europe. He manages package tourism at Marcopolo Voyages, a Tehran-based tourism wholesaler. Iranians, he says, are surprisingly keen on Western culture.
“The usual picture of Iranians going abroad is of people just wanting to shop, wear bikinis and visit nightclubs – but my experience is very different,” he says. “After taking a group of doctors for a medical exhibition in Düsseldorf, we also visited Cologne cathedral where they listened to me talking about the architecture for 90 minutes.” Pahlavani, who has lectured in architecture, has also taken successful tours to India, Russia, Britain and Italy.
Luggage trade. The most popular destinations for Iranians going abroad are Turkey and Dubai, both of which are nearby and readily offer visas. Atilla Koc, Turkey’s culture and tourism ministry, said in June last year that about 1 millions Iranians visited Turkey in 2005 and that he hoped for 1.5 million in 2006. Growing trade between the two countries, rising from $1.2 billion in 2002 to about $5 billion this year, includes a significant amount of “luggage” trade undertaken by tourists.
“Iranians go to Dubai because of the social freedoms and because of the smell of success,” says Pahlavani. “The rulers and planners of Dubai have delivered on everything they have promised. They have a shopping festival, a film festival, Formula 1 racing and an enclosed ski slope with real snow – all these create a sense of movement and excitement.”
But tour operators say many European countries are cutting back on tourist visas for Iranians. “We reckon the number has gone down 20 percent in many cases over the past year,” says one. “Sometimes one member of a family is refused [a visa] and this means the rest don’t go.” In consequence, tour operators are turning to new destinations, including Russia, China, north Africa, east Africa and eastern Europe.

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