TEHRAN (Dispatches) - Iran’s Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Ezzatollah Zarghami has said that the government will scrap visa restrictions, a plan that to help the severely hit tourism industry amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Zarghami did not specify the date upon which those regulations would be scrapped. But several Iranian media outlets reported that twice-vaccinated foreign travelers would be embraced under the updated regulations.
The announcement came as Iran’s Health Ministry is reporting progress toward curbing a stubborn fifth wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iran’s Coronavirus Taskforce under former president Hassan Rouhani introduced a strict visa mandate, suspending all tourism-related entries and allowing visitors solely for medical, business and academic purposes.
With those restrictions in place, all businesses across the tourism sector — from travel agents and hotels to transport companies and restaurants — have been in the red, some reporting bankruptcy and closures, with thousands of redundant staff members thrust into the unemployed community.
Leading companies in the sector have relentlessly urged the national task force to ease at least partly some of those rules.
Multiple estimates have been released on the extent of pandemic-triggered loss incurred by Iranian tourism. Only months into the outbreak, Zarghami’s predecessor, Ali Asghar Mounesan, lamented the “near-zero level” nosedive of the sector.