ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The number of tourists visiting the Kurdistan Region over the Ramadan holidays compared to last year has doubled to 243,000 people. Many came from the rest of Iraq seeking cooler temperatures and the relative safety of Kurdistan, generating an estimated $ 73 million.
“This is twice the last Ramadan Eid when 122, 000 tourists visited the Kurdistan Region,” Nawroz Mawlud, the minister for Municipalities and Tourism told Rudaw on Wednesday.
She said that about 70 percent of the tourists came from the southern and center of Iraq and the rest were from Iran, Turkey, and foreign countries.
Besides the relative security in the region compared to Iraq, she said that the high number of tourists comes as the result of some new tourism projects in different parts of the Region and a marketing strategy targeting more tourists to consider spending their holiday in Kurdistan.
One such place where her ministry helped was at Bekhal waterfall, north of Erbil, with 25 percent of the resort now renovated.
She said that they have also seen a rise in the number of foreign holidaymakers visiting Kurdistan, mainly because of the airlines which better connect the Kurdistan Region to the rest of the world through the two international airports of Erbil and Sulaimani.
While Kurdistan has historically been a destination of choice for the summer holidays, Mawlud said that they are working on a year-round tourism industry, with their efforts paying off last winter.
“Our plan was for the tourists to visit the Kurdistan Region in the four seasons, and fortunately this year in the winter a big number of tourists visited, and the same for spring,” Mawud added.
A top winter destination is Mount Korek in Erbil province. Local officials said in winter that its snowy mountains attracted more visitors than the area did in summer.
Video: Tourists enjoy the snowy Korek Mountain last December.
The ministry collected the data from the Region’s checkpoints, border crossings and airports from June 22 to July 1.
It estimates that every holidaymaker spends an average of $300, and based on that data, the private sector may have generated $73 million, Mawlud explained.
Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, began on June 25 in the Kurdistan Region.
The end of the fasting month of Ramadan is usually celebrated with a week of holiday festivities in most Muslim nations. Although the Kurdistan Region attracted thousands of sightseers from neighboring countries, the war with ISIS and the stagnation of the Kurdish economy still deterred a large number of foreign tourists from visiting.
In 2015 as the Region went through severe economic crises and internal political turmoil, just 30,000 tourists chose to come to Kurdish destinations in Iraq, according to the Region’s tourism board.
Some of the visitors come via tourism companies in big groups with week-long programs to visit Kurdistan’s spectacular mountainous areas and waterfalls.
The Kurdish region has put in place a number of strict checkpoints between the Kurdistan Region and the rest of Iraq along with tightening security since the rise of ISIS about three years ago.
Nawar Hamid, an Iraqi trip organizer who brought Iraqi tourists to Erbil for the holidays told Rudaw that crossing the many checkpoints to Erbil — some imposed by the Kurdish security — was easier this year compared to last year.
Related story: Arab tourists fear losing their ‘Beloved North’ after Kurdistan referendum
