Kurdistan tourism nearly halved in 2023: official data

Shafaq News/ The Kurdistan region of Iraq received nearly 3.5 million tourists from inside and outside the country in 2023, data by the Kurdistan Tourism Board showed on Sunday.

The board's data show that 25% of those tourists were foreigners, coming from Gulf states, Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries in Europe.

The most popular tourist destination in the region this year was Erbil, which saw over 1.8 million visitors in 2023. Other popular destinations included Sulaymaniyah and Duhok.

Those figures, however, are nearly half of 2022, when the region welcomed more than 6.168 million tourists, according to government statistics. In that year, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah received more than 5.2 million tourists combined.