More than 80 percent of tourists visiting Azerbaijan prefer Baku. This means that only 20 out of every 100 tourists visiting the country travel outside Baku to the regions. In the first 9 months of this year, Gusar was the second most preferred region by tourists. 6.4 percent of visitors to Azerbaijan stayed in this region. Overall, 4.2 percent of tourists preferred Naftalan, 3.4 percent Gabala, 2.4 percent Guba, 0.6 percent Shamakhi, and 2.4 percent preferred hotels in other cities and regions.
Modern.az reports that MP Vugar Bayramov shared a post about this on his Facebook account.
He noted that during this period, the number of overnight stays by tourists increased by 9.3 percent compared to January-September 2024, reaching 1 million 937 thousand.
"Of the total number of overnight stays, 14.1 percent were accounted for by India, 10.9 percent by Russia, 9.1 percent by Saudi Arabia, 8.7 percent by Turkey, 4.9 percent by the United Arab Emirates, 4.6 percent by Israel, 3.6 percent by Pakistan, 3.5 percent by the USA, 3.5 percent by China, 3.2 percent by Uzbekistan, 2.8 percent by Kazakhstan, 2.8 percent by Kuwait, 2.3 percent by the United Kingdom, 1.2 percent by Germany, 1.0 percent by Italy, 0.8 percent by Georgia, 0.6 percent by Iran, 0.6 percent by Bahrain, 0.6 percent by Ukraine, and 21.2 percent by citizens of other countries".
"As can be seen, our regions continue to lose out to capital hotels in attracting foreign tourists. While this can be considered normal given the capital's infrastructure, the significant difference in the number of regional overnight stays is noteworthy. Unfortunately, the regions are still unable to fully present their tourism potential, which creates difficulties in attracting foreign tourists. On the other hand, the prices of tourism services in most regions remain high. Quality, however, still lags behind standards. This indicates that there is a need for systematic measures to increase the tourism potential of the regions and attract more tourists, as well as for strengthening state support in this direction," V. Bayramov stated in his post.
