Tourists flock to Sulaimani in first half of year

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds of thousands of tourists visited Sulaimani in the first half the year, the city’s tourism department said on Friday, with thousands of others expected to arrive during Eid al-Adha celebrations. 

Sulaimani’s resorts and tourist destinations welcomed 9 hundred thousand people between January and June this year, Ali Rauf, head of the city’s General Tourism Directorate said in a press conference, stressing that appropriate accommodations have been made available to the travelers.

Considering its moderate temperature compared to the rest of the country, the Kurdistan Region hosts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, mostly from Iraq’s southern and central provinces, around the time of holidays and traditional celebrations.

Unofficial statistics show that around 15 thousand tourists arrived in Sulaimani on Thursday ahead of Eid al-Adha celebrations, Rauf said, noting that over “a hundred thousand” tourists are hoped to flock to the city in the upcoming days.

The city of Duhok has also witnessed a noticeable increase in the number of tourists in the first half of 2022, welcoming around 9 hundred thousand visitors, Rewar Mohammed Rashid, spokesperson for Duhok’s general tourism directorate, told Rudaw’s Ayub Nasri on Thursday, a 30 percent spike from the numbers of last year.

Rashid added that they expect around 50 thousand tourists to visit during the days of Eid.

Saturday is the first day of Eid al-Adha, often celebrated by Muslims for four consecutive days. The celebration is one of Islam’s two major holidays, marking the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah month on the Islamic Hijri calendar.

Tourism in the Kurdistan Region has been a booming sector in recent years, but it was hit by coronavirus-related measures in 2020 before it slowly started to revive last year. 

Millions of tourists have visited the Region's provinces since 2021 with over 3.1 million arriving in the first half of this year only.