Officials in Yazd Province scrapped plans to build 40 tourist resorts which were previously approved. Since 2007, about 45 regions in the central region had been designated as so-called “exemplary tourist areas”, and projects to develop those sites into tourist resorts were approved — some of which had even secured funding from private investors. However, the extremely slow progress of the projects prompted provincial officials to reevaluate the idea. As a result, construction licenses for 40 projects were revoked, 30 of which did not even have investors, according to a statement on the website of the provincial office of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization.
