Overseas Travel Marketers Get Together in Kerman

Travel and tourism operators based overseas are attending the second assembly of Iran’s representatives abroad, which is underway since Sunday in Kerman Province.

The assembly is organized by Iran Tourism and Automobile Club in cooperation with Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization and Kerman’s Chamber of Commerce. The event is aimed at providing an opportunity for representatives to pool their experiences and introduce the attractions and investment packages of Kerman Province, CHTN reported. The southeastern province has high untapped tourism potentials and its selection as the venue of the event is expected to help exploit these capacities.

  Tourism Volunteers

Appointing people to act as advertisers of Iran’s tourism potentials in foreign countries was placed on the agenda in 2014.

Today, Iran has representatives in 19 countries, including Japan, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Oman, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.

These people are assigned by ITAC, but follow the policies and guidelines of ICHHTO to attract tourists to the country.  The delegates are selected from among volunteers already residing in the target countries. Their duties have been defined under four main categories, namely disseminating information, advertising, marketing and attracting investment.

The delegates are tasked with distributing information materials among travel agencies, conducting opinion polls and surveys in the target market, promoting Iran’s tourism in foreign media, holding events to display the country’s attractions, organizing Iran’s presence in foreign expos, promoting  package tours to Iran and introducing investment packages in Iran’s tourism market.

According to Morteza Haji, managing director of ITAC, the representatives are neither employed nor paid by the Iranian government for doing the job.

“These people have their own businesses and introduce Iran’s attractions in the target countries,” he said.

  Marketing Vital to Attain 2025 target

ITAC has a small budget for publicizing Iran overseas which, according to Haji, is only sufficient for the printing and distribution of posters, flyers and other advertising materials whose contents are designed by the club and the Tourism Department of ICHHTO.

“The budget is hardly adequate for publicizing Iran on foreign television channels,” he said. In fact, the job seems to be delegated to the wrong organization since the primary operation of ITAC, as stated by Haji, concerns the safety of road transportation.

Iran’s declared goal is to attract 20 million tourists annually by 2025, generating $30 billion in revenue. However, with only eight years to go, the target appears to be very ambitious. Aside from developing tourism infrastructure in the country, Iran has to improve its lackluster marketing sector to be able to achieve its goal. Appointing representatives in foreign countries is a right step but with the present mechanism, it seems hardly enough to enhance the image of Iran in the eyes of foreigners and encourage them to choose the country as their holiday destination.