More than 80 percent of tourists coming to Azerbaijan prefer the city of Baku. This means that out of every 100 tourists arriving in the country, only 20 go outside Baku, to the regions. In the first 9 months of this year, the second most preferred region by tourists was Qusar. 6.4 percent of those coming to Azerbaijan stayed in this region. Overall, 4.2 percent of tourists preferred hotels in Naftalan, 3.4 percent in Gabala, 2.4 percent in Guba, 0.6 percent in Shamakhi, and 2.4 percent in hotels in other cities and regions.
During this period, the number of overnight stays by tourists increased by 9.3 percent compared to January-September 2024, reaching 1,937,000. Of the total number of overnight stays, 14.1 percent were by Indian tourists, 10.9 percent by Russian, 9.1 percent by Saudi Arabian, 8.7 percent by Turkish, 4.9 percent by United Arab Emirates, 4.6 percent by Israeli, 3.6 percent by Pakistani, 3.5 percent by American, 3.5 percent by Chinese, 3.2 percent by Uzbek, 2.8 percent by Kazakh, 2.8 percent by Kuwaiti, 2.3 percent by British, 1.2 percent by German, 1.0 percent by Italian, 0.8 percent by Georgian, 0.6 percent by Iranian, 0.6 percent by Bahraini, 0.6 percent by Ukrainian, and 21.2 percent by citizens of other countries.
Economist deputy Vuqar Bayramov, who presented the statistics to Medianews.az, stated that our regions continue to lose to capital hotels in attracting foreign tourists: “Considering the infrastructure of the capital, this can be regarded as normal, but the large difference in the number of regional overnight stays is striking. Unfortunately, the regions still cannot fully present their tourism potential, which creates difficulties in attracting foreign tourists. On the other hand, the prices of tourism services remain high in most regions. The quality still lags behind standards. This indicates that for increasing the tourism potential of the regions and attracting more tourists, systematic measures and strengthening state support in this direction are needed.”
Nailə Qasımova,
Medianews.az