Iran as a destination for Chinese tourists? Chinese renewables in the Middle East, Zhai Jun visits Israel
Cultural tourism nexus and Sino-Iranian strategic partnership in an era of Western media distortion - Tehran Times. This was written by Amir Mohammad Esmaeili, an Iranian PhD student at Shanghai International Studies University, which is home to one of China’s stronger Middle East/West Asia centers. While I’m certainly no tourism expert, this reads like a lot of wishful thinking. China has been signing agreements on tourism and cultural exchanges with several countries in the region and they’re already operating at a significant level. That Chinese can visit Iran visa-free, have Chinese speaking guides and Chinese food at the hotel, and pay for everything using Alipay or WeChat Pay isn’t especially novel; you can do all of that here in the Emirates too. The draw of course could be that Iran offers a unique cultural experience, and your renminbi will stretch a lot further - see below: a 13-day tour for $4,333 is a bargain. But Chinese Iran experts I talk with don’t particularly enjoy going there these days so I have a hard time imagining it as a hot spot for the average tourist. And the numbers so far don’t look promising:
Iran’s former Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy, Mehdi Safari, noted Iran aims to become a key destination for Chinese travelers, with the potential to attract one to two million of China’s 200 million outbound tourists annually. This aligns with Iran’s 2025 Tourism Vision Plan, which seeks to increase tourist arrivals from 4.8 million in 2014 to 20 million by 2025.
From March 21, 2023, to January 20, 2024, over 54,000 Chinese tourists visited Iran, spending an average of $1,000 each.
For comparison’s sake, this Xinhua article published over the weekend has 300,000 Chinese tourists visiting Egypt last year. This China Daily one has 290,000 to the UAE in the first four months of 2024. Granted, 2024 wasn’t a particularly great year to visit Iran, but that’s not likely to change in 2025, or at any point soon.
