ArmInfo.The tourism budget in 2024 will be 13.2 billion drams. Minister of Economy of Armenia Vahan Kerobyan stated on October 31 at the RA NA Standing Committees' hearings on the draft state budget of the country for 2024. In this regard, he emphasized that over the past 3 years, the tourism budget in Armenia has increased 6.5-fold.
Kerobyan noted that 1.5 billion drams will be allocated for marketing operations alone next year, against 990 million drams in 2023 and 170 million drams in 2022.
According to the minister, the increase in the budget for the tourism sector is also conditioned by the implementation of the new World Bank's Tourism and regional infrastructure project (TRIP), which envisages the introduction of new quality infrastructures in 20 tourism clusters to be established.
He emphasized that currently one tourist spends an average of $1.2 thousand in Armenia. The state budget from one tourist receives an average of about 44 thousand drams, that is, in general, as the minister noted, citing data from the research center, the state budget of Armenia is replenished from incoming tourism by 100 billion drams. Kerobyan noted that with the implementation of the TRIP, which is aimed at improving the quality of services in the field of tourism and the quality of infrastructure, it will be possible to attract tourists to Armenia who will spend from $1.5 thousand to $2 thousand in our country.
The minister also said that a certain part of the budget will be allocated to the development of MICE tourism (Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions tourism, business tourism associated with the organization and holding of corporate events).
According to the data of the Armenian Tourism Committee, in Jan-Sept of this year, 1.85 million tourists visited our country, which is 49% higher than a year ago.
Traditionally, the lion's share of vacationers in Armenia are tourists from Russia (51%), followed by citizens of Georgia (10%), Iran (6%), the USA (3%), as well as India, France, Ukraine, Germany, Belarus and China (1% each).
