Azerbaijan Airlines has recently announced the start of direct flights between Baku and Delhi twice a week, effective from August 9, 2022, the first secretary of the Indian embassy, Vinay Kumar, said while speaking at an online B2B meeting of companies operating in the field of tourism between Azerbaijan and India, Report informs.
"I believe that this announcement by AZAL is going to boost the tourism cooperation between the two countries,” he said.
According to him, it will reduce the travel time between Baku and Delhi to just more than four hours.
He noted that the Indian Travel and Tourism Industry is a very important sector for India:
“It is one of the largest components of India's service sector, and it contributes to close to 7% of India’s GDP annually. The sector is expected to experience robust growth post-pandemic, and to facilitate the industry's growth, the Government of India has introduced various measures, including improvement in tourism infrastructure and ease of travel to India by extending e-visa facility to over 150 countries, including to Azerbaijani citizens.”
“As most of you are aware, while the tourism traffic from India to Azerbaijan has seen substantial growth in the last few years, there is still far few visitors from Azerbaijan to India. It could perhaps be because of the lack of awareness and information regarding the huge variety of attractive places in India that visitors from Azerbaijan could choose. I, therefore, hope that through today’s exchanges and presentations, we will be able to provide more information to the major stakeholders in Azerbaijan and be better prepared to welcome visitors to India. I wish to request all the tour operators in India to use the opportunity and introduce attractive tourism packages to explore Incredible India,” Kumar stressed.
He also noted that India and Azerbaijan enjoy warm and friendly relations based on historical and cultural ties:
“Our bilateral trade in the first six months of 2022 at $895 million has already exceeded the bilateral trade figure for 2021 ($739 million). India is now the fourth largest export destination for Azerbaijan.”
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