THERE IS GROWING INTEREST AMONG TRAVEL AGENCIES IN KARABAKH
KarabakhOpen
30-05-2007 10:24:52
Ethnic tourism is the main segment of tourism in Karabakh. However,
one or two years ago other nationalities started visiting Karabakh,
namely from Israel, Japan, Germany, Spain, Russia, Sergey Shahverdyan,
director of Artsakh Development Agency, said in an interview with
the KarabakhOpen.
The number of tourists visiting NKR grows by 40 percent
every year. However, it is only 3 percent of tourists visiting
Armenia. According to Sergey Shahverdyan, last year only 10 thousand
out of 380 thousand people visiting Armenia came to Karabakh
as well. "It’s not much but it is thanks to the Armenian travel
agencies. It’s enough to say that Karabakh is not mentioned on the
official site of Armenian Agency for Development of Tourism," Sergey
Shahverdyan said.
On May 29 Sergey Shahverdyan held a news conference to tell about the
tourism expo held in Moscow on May 17-20 in which the ADA participated
as well.
Travel agencies of 35 countries and 70 regions of Russia took part
in the expo.
We have already written that the Azerbaijani embassy and a number of
Azerbaijani organizations in Moscow sent lots of letters with protest
and threats to the organizers. According to Sergey Shahverdyan,
the Russian agencies were reserved, but in order to avoid clashes,
Karabakh agreed not to display the symbols of NKR. "Since it was a
commercial exposition, we did not insist on state symbols, but we had
a separate stand with a sign "Nagorno-Karabakh". On the first day 3 or
4 Azerbaijanis hang about the stand and tried to mislead the visitors,
thereby attracting interest. However, the number of protestors showed
that the Azerbaijani community of Moscow was not interested in this
campaign," Sergey Shahverdyan said. He also emphasized that the
Armenian community of Moscow visited the expo as well, and it took
much effort to prevent a clash.
Davit Ishkhanyan, member of the agency, said the participation in
the expo was financed by Karabakh Telecom. The agency is grateful to
Levon Hairapetyan who helped solve a number of problems. "During the
presentation of our stand we held degustation of wine. Karabakh Gold
provided an assortment of wines.
This time Artsakh Alco did not provide wines. We were told that the
company did not boost profits after the previous expo. But I want to
announce that our organization is a non-profit organization. We are
an NGO which wants to foster development of tourism in Karabakh. I
should say that participation in expos is fruitful. There is growing
interest among travel agencies in Karabakh," Sergey Shahverdyan said.