Seyyed Mohsen Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, the secretary of IUESA in an interview with Fars News about the role and position of tourism industry in global economy development said, “Until the late of 1960s tourism was an activity which a few people could participate and they were mainly limited to the Europe and North America, but main global changes such as the spread of urbanization caused remarkable growth of this industry and regions like East Asia experienced rapid growth in this domain”

Pointing tourism as one of the fastest parts in the developing of global economy he said, “Today tourism or industry without smoke, after fuel, chemicals and automobile industry, is considered as the 4th largest industry in the world.”

Adding one of the reasons of attractiveness of tourism industry is its flexibility, he said “During the past years, that global economy had a vague perspective and economic growth was fragile and experienced major challenges, tourism always has had a growing trend in a way that the increase of international tourism demand in the first 5-month of 2015 had 4% growth and according to the World Tourism Organization report, this rate was positive for all areas.”

Explaining that there were 322 million of international tourists from the beginning of this year until April had 4.5% growth compared to the same period in the last year. Also, in 2014 the rate of international tourists were more than 1 billion people in 2014 and according to the predictions it will reach to 1.8 billion people with 3.3%  annual growth until 2030.

The secretary of IUESA said “on the basis of this prediction tourists’ destination will change from developed countries to emerging economies in Asia and Latin America and this change is so that 57% of total international tourists will be to these destinations in 2030.

Emphasizing today tourism is the famous with invisible exports term, he said, “Currently it devotes 9% of GDP, 6% of total exports value 1.5 trillion dollars and 30% of total exports of services in the world to itself.”

He considers one of the encouraging reasons of tourism development in the world is the role of this industry in employment and he added that international tourism has created a dependent industry and it means that from every 11 jobs in the world 1 of them is in tourism industry and in 2020 from every 10 people in the world one of them will work in the tourism part.

Referring to the Middle East region attracts 4% of total world tourism and our country having many tourism attractions can be an attractive and safe destination for many international tourists, he said “Iran has potential facilities, in terms of geographical location, natural, historical and religious attractions, for active and effective presence in the tourism industry, and according to the experts’ opinion is one of the top 10 countries having tourism potential”.

He considered Ecotourism, Geo-tourism, cultural tourism, religious, medical, historical and urban only as a part of Iran tourism attractions and said, “Yet, our country is located on the fringes of the global market tourism and according to the report of World Travel and Tourism Organization in the field of tourism competition, and it has devoted rank 98 among 140 countries of the world in 2013 and it is located along with countries such as Guatemala, Surinam and Mongolia”.

Highlighting on the basis of this report Iran is also located in rank 11 among 15 countries in the Middle East and small countries like UAE and Qatar were on the top of this ranking, he further said, also in Iran tourism sector includes 2.4% of total country GDP and 2.1% of total country’s employment which it is much lower than the world average.

Expressing that we need more consideration and macro investment in this sector to employ young workforces in country via world tourism, he said, World Tourism Organization has predicted that from 66 million of jobs that will create in the next 10 years, 62% of them is related to Asia and Oceania and 48% of total jobs in tourism sector was in China and India in 2011.

Source : IUESA