Iran's Ministry of Tourism is ready to support the initiative to unilaterally abolish the visa regime for Russians, Deputy Minister of Murtaza Rahmani Movahed said.
"Certainly, we support the idea and we will also try to reach this goal,'' RIA Novosti cites him as saying.
"We are sure that if we want to develop the tourism sector we need to facilitate the visa obtaining process. Two steps have already been taken. Firstly, we increased the validity of the visa from 15 to 30 days that tourists receive in airports. And the second step is that we are in the process of developing an electronic visa. It may happen after a year. As we previously stated, we are ready to abolish visas for Russian tourists if the Russian government agrees to take a mutual step,'' the Iranian official stressed.
It became known shortly after that about the readiness of the Russian side to take mutual steps: Rosturizm proposed that the Russian Foreign Ministry consider the possibility of interaction with Iran regarding group visa-free travels.
"We believe that interaction between Russia and Iran may be an effective mechanism related to group visa-free travels. This work is being carried out regarding China. Rosturizm formulated the proposal and sent it to the Foreign Ministry. It is at the Ministry for consideration now," Interfax cites the head of the department, Oleg Safonov.
He added that Rosturizm is interested in increasing the flow of tourists between the two countries, as Iran "is a very comfortable and safe country" for Russian tourists.
Senior Lecturer, Department of Management and Business Department of Economics and Social Sciences (FESN) at RANHiGS Eugeny Itsakov expressed his confidence in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza regarding the implementation of these measures that "may open serious prospects, as Turkey and Egypt are closed now.'' Iran is a country with a fairly serious level of order, where the hotel infrastructure is well developed that can provide significant returns," he said.
"Iran is a new country for us and for our country's political establishment, we should have mutual understanding. As for tourism, this is a very interesting destination. As for cultural tourism, there are a number of fantastic monuments. It is good that they intend to introduce a visa free regime,'' the expert added.
Professor of the department of management and the service branch of the Institute of Management (IOM) at RANHiGS, Galina Dekhtyar, also noted that the flow of tourists between the two countries is low. "1.07 million Chinese travel to Russian and only about 10,000 Iranians travelled to Russia. That is not an essential or decisive flow of tourists," she said.
Dekhtyar explains that earlier, "we didn't visit these countries, as they are unusual for us,'' the expert added.
