The President congratulated tourism sector employees

The President congratulated tourism sector employees

The President sent a congratulatory message to the tourism sector employees of Uzbekistan

September 27 is celebrated as World Tourism Day. In recent years, the policy of openness pursued in our country, the facilitation of the visa regime, the expansion of transport and hotel infrastructure, and the introduction of numerous tax and customs privileges for entrepreneurs are giving a new impetus to the development of the sector.

This can be clearly seen in the example of the number of foreign tourists visiting Uzbekistan in 2025, which increased nearly 6 times compared to 2016 and approached 12 million, while the export of tourism services grew 11-fold to reach 4 billion 800 million US dollars.

Many sites that serve as a unique calling card of New Uzbekistan, such as the Center of Islamic Civilization, the complexes of Imam Bukhari and Burhanuddin Marginani, and the Center for Contemporary Art, are generating great interest not only among our compatriots but also among foreign tourists.

"We are determined to consistently continue our work in this direction and turn our beautiful land into one of the most famous tourism centers in the world with a further developed modern tourism infrastructure. To this end, we plan to build an international tourist town, a congress center, and a historical-ethnographic park in Khiva that harmonize history and modernity, and to transform Ichan-Kala into a 'smart' museum-complex based on digital technologies.

In Samarkand, a Silk Road Museum featuring unique exhibits will be established. In Karakalpakstan, new tourist routes along archaeological monuments will be opened. New complexes such as 'Gilon' in the Shakhrisabz district of the Kashkadarya region and 'Arashan' in the Pop district of the Namangan region will be established.

The wide introduction of modern technologies in the sector, the launch of a unified national tourism platform, the integration of tourism services into a single system, the extensive use of artificial intelligence capabilities, and the continuous improvement of staff qualifications will also remain priority tasks. We will pay special attention to the rapid development of high-value-added areas such as gastronomic, ecological, pilgrimage, medical, mountain and adventure, business, ethno, and rural tourism.

By implementing such urgent tasks, we aim to increase the number of foreign tourists to 20 million per year, raise the share of tourism in the gross domestic product to 7 percent, exceed 8 billion dollars in services export, and double the number of high-class hotels by 2030," the President noted.

In the congratulatory message, the head of state proposed the establishment of the honorary title "Honored Tourism Worker of the Republic of Uzbekistan."