Lebanon Making Efforts To Attract More Russian Tourists - Tourism Minister

Lebanon aims to attract more tourists from Russia and is making efforts to improve the conditions for this to happen, including through the development of bilateral cooperation in the tourism sector, Lebanese Tourism Minister Avedis Guidanian told Sputnik on Friday

BEIRUT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th July, 2019) Lebanon aims to attract more tourists from Russia and is making efforts to improve the conditions for this to happen, including through the development of bilateral cooperation in the tourism sector, Lebanese Tourism Minister Avedis Guidanian told Sputnik on Friday.

According to Guidanian, a total of 10,109 tourists from Russia visited Lebanon in the first half of 2019. This is the highest number recorded for this period in the past nine years.

"These numbers speak about progress, but we do not find it enough, so we focus our efforts on improving [conditions for attracting tourists from Russia]," Guidanian said, pointing to the need for broader business-to-business collaboration toward that aim.

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He added that the Russian market was very important for Lebanon since it yielded big opportunities, and that he had discussed tourism development opportunities with Russian businesses and signed a number of agreements on the matter during his latest visit in Moscow.

At a Russian-Lebanese economic forum in Beirut in March, Guidanian said that his country was determined to boost its touristic attractiveness and reroute the Russian tourist stream from neighboring Cyprus to Lebanon.