The Kurdistan Region has its own position and importance in terms of its geographical location, political, and strategic importance. This region has experienced great economic, social, and cultural development in recent years, which has affected the overall humanitarian activities in the Kurdistan Region.
Tourism has become one of the basic necessities of human life nowadays. Tourism's geographical potential includes the capabilities that become the basis for the emergence, growth, and development of tourism activities and along with administrative and economic institutions, one of the bases of the revival and development of this sector. Whether these bases are natural or human, the richer the region in tourism potential, the more powerful it will be to attract tourists and lead to the development of the tourism movement.
Natural tourism potentials are many and varied. We can say that natural resources are considered by many tourists to be the main factor in identifying tourist areas because the beautiful scenery and the diversity of the landscape, water, and air of tourism in each region, are raw materials for tourism and the presence of this ability in the Kurdistan Region is reflected in different amounts and characteristics.
Kurdistan's geographical location, the increase in natural and human potential of tourism in the Kurdistan Region, the identification of hundreds of tourist areas, and the development of tourism and services in the Kurdistan Region, have led to Kurdistan as the most important tourism geography in Iraq. Every year, a large number of residents of central and southern Iraq visit Kurdistan for several days and sometimes several weeks due to the cool and favorable climate of Kurdistan and tourist areas, especially in summer and high mountains in winter, which snow a lot. This is despite the number of foreign tourists visiting the Kurdistan Region.
Tourism is recognized as a new industry nowadays and plays an important role in the national economy and in securing national income. Tourism activity is constantly renewed. This will enable economic and social benefits to be derived continuously and without change.
One of the needs of tourism under globalization trends is to introduce tourist areas to foreign tourists which plays a major role in national productivity. Through this sector, we can strengthen national products more than domestic and foreign investment, by building large tourism communities in important tourist areas of Kurdistan.
The most important factors that have led to the development of tourism in the Kurdistan Region
1. Steps to economic progress, economic activity, and increase the level of per capita income in the national income.
2. Increase in population, improvement of health conditions, reduction of mortality, and improvement of life in all aspects.
3. The emergence of human desires and needs as the needs of the times, which includes the fields of "culture, tourism, health, etc. that have a widespread presence and are significant aspects of the development of the tourism movement in the Kurdistan Region.
4. The development and expansion of transportation networks such as air, water, and land, have led to a major revolution in the world of tourism.
5. One of the other important factors such as increasing the feelings and desire of individuals for the welfare of life increasing the level of human awareness, avoiding restraint, and the disappearance of crises and political problems in the country.
Tourism is the third most lucrative sector in the world that can develop Kurdistan. Also, the achievements of this sector, in addition to increasing national income, will create thousands of jobs in areas where activities are located.
There are 3100 places in the Kurdistan Region that offer tourism services.
"More than 2 million tourists visited the Kurdistan Region in the first three months of this year, 25 percent of whom were foreigners," the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Tourism Board said. It added that the arrival of tourists to Kurdistan continues.
