More than 60,000 tourists from southern and central Iraqi provinces joined thousands in Erbil to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, according to Erbil’s governor Omed Khoshnaw.
The Kurdistan Region is considered Iraq’s main tourism hub, with its moderate summer weather and cold winters, the Region welcomes Iraqi tourists throughout the year.
Over 40,000 tourists visited the city of Sulaimani to celebrate New Year’s Eve 2023, according to Aram Shwani, the head of Sulaimani’s tourism board.
A noticeable increase from the number of visitors to the city for the 2022 New Year’s Eve, which was 30,000.
The media head of the Kurdistan Region’s tourism board in December said that the Region received more tourists in 2022 than it had anticipated.
“Our plan was to boost tourists arriving to six million people, but according to data available, so far over six million tourists have visited the Kurdistan Region,” Ibrahim Abdulmajid said.
Despite suffering due to coronavirus-related measures in 2020, the Region’s tourism has once again boomed.
Abdulmajid in September told Rudaw that around four million tourists had visited the Kurdistan Region in the first seven months of the year, adding that 85 percent of them came from central and southern Iraqi provinces, with the rest being from Iran, Turkey, Europe, and the US.
Last year, the board announced that the Region had received over four million tourists.
