ArmInfo. Lebanese Armenians aspire to come to Armenia, but also Arabs, first of all, Christians, Lebanese tourism minister Avetis Kitanian told reporters on September 18 in Yerevan on the margins of the 6th "Armenia-Diaspora" forum.
According to him, Yerevan-Beirut-Yerevan flights are filled almost by 90%. For the Christian Arabs, the Christian heritage of Armenia is of great interest, the minister said. In parallel, as Avetis Kitanian noted, the number of tourists from Armenia is also growing. In 2012, there were 1350, and in the first 8 months of 2017 - about 10 thousand. The minister refrained from calling the number of Lebanese tourists in Armenia, but, according to Kitanyan, there are more than they can attract. This is both winter tourism and medical tourism. "Quality medicine is not available in all Arab countries, the Armenian value for money can attract them very much," Kitanian said.
To recall, the first regular flight of the "Armenia" airline from Yerevan arrived in Beirut on April 10. Flight time 2 hours 25 minutes. As an airline announces, the ticket price starts at $ 320 (the amount includes 30 kg of luggage and 10 kg of hand luggage).
To note, the number of visits of foreign citizens to Armenia in the first half of this year exceeded 1.3 million, which is more than the annual indicator by 24.3%. In TOP-3, the number of entries to Armenia included citizens of Russia, Georgia and Iran. At the same time, during the reporting period the number of visits by Russian citizens increased by 33.7% to 241 thousand. The second place was strengthened for the citizens of Georgia, the number of visits exceeded 151 thousand, with an increase of 11% per annum. And the top three Iranian leaders are closing, with the number of visits to 89.8 thousand, which is 27.4% more than last year. In particular, in the TOP-10 entered the entrances of US citizens (17.5 thousand), Ukraine (12.7 thousand), the Philippines (10.9 thousand), Germany (7.8 thousand), France (7.6 thousand), India (4.3 thousand) and Poland (4.3 thousand). According to the government program until 2020, Armenia intends to annually visit about 3 million tourists.