Tourists prefer planes to come to country

By Azernews

By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Taking into account that the most popular destinations for locals are neighboring Turkey, Georgia, Russia and Iran, traveling by car is very suitable to get to these countries, thus proportion of Azerbaijani travelers preferring this method of transportation to go abroad is very high.

However, majority of foreigners and stateless persons arrive in Azerbaijan by air.

In 2018, 2,849,600 people arrived in Azerbaijan, 1,183,800 of which visited the country by air transport. The second most popular transportation method is car. The number of arrivals in Azerbaijan by car is slightly lower than the number of tourists who used air transport.

Last year, Azerbaijan was visited by 1,130,800 foreigners and stateless persons coming by car. Next come the rail and water transport.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijani travelers visited foreign countries primarily by car within the last 6 years. The number of Azerbaijani citizens traveling abroad by car is significantly higher than the number of those traveling by air.

In 2018, 4,908,100 citizens of Azerbaijan went to foreign countries, of which 3,155,500 people used a car for their trips, while 875,900 citizens of Azerbaijan used air transport to travel abroad.

From January to June 2019, 2.54 million Azerbaijani citizens visited foreign countries, which showed a growth by 25.8 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the State Statistical Committee.

As for the tourist inflow, 1.4 million tourists visited Azerbaijan in the first half of 2019. The flow of tourists to Azerbaijan increased by 6.5 percent compared to the same period last year.

As for the origin countries, 29.4 percent of tourists came from Russia, 24.3 percent - Georgia, 10.5 percent - Turkey, 7.5 percent - Iran, 2.6 percent - the UAE, and 2.4 percent - Saudi Arabia.

The number of tourists arriving in Azerbaijan from EU countries increased by 24.3 percent to 66,500 people in January to June 2019, while from CIS countries – by 5 percent to 502,500.