By Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
Imam Mosque. Photo from http://rockaroundtheglobe.blogspot.com/2011/03/iran-part-two.html
The U.S. and Iran may have miles to go in their negotiations over curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the ease in hostility has already produced a boomlet in American travel to Iran.
Three U.S.-based tour operators say they’ve seen a surge of bookings and questions about Iran in recent months. They’ve also heard encouragement from Iranian government officials, who met in New York with several U.S. tour operators during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to the city in September.
This sudden flurry of activity doesn’t mean Tehran will be threatening Paris as a tourist magnet; U.S. visitors there are counted in dozens, not thousands. But it’s a notable shift for two countries that have been largely estranged since 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries seized the country and took 52 Americans hostage for more than a year.
Since then, the U.S. and allied countries have used economic sanctions to weaken the Iranian economy and called for Iran to stop developing nuclear capabilities that could be used in warfare. As for Iran as a destination, in a warning updated Nov. 21, the U.S. State Department warned Americans to “carefully consider the risks of travel to Iran” and noted the Iranian officials have detained or imprisoned some American citizens on various charges, including espionage.
Yet the U.S. government has never blocked travel to Iran the way it has restrained travel to Cuba. Thus, when Iran’s new leadership started showing signs of increased openness to the West after Rouhani’s election in June, U.S.-based tour operators quickly saw a jump in curiosity about visiting Iran.
Janet Moore, owner of the Long Beach-based tour operator Distant Horizons , said she arranged Iranian trips for 50-60 U.S. travelers in 2013. In 2014, she expects that number to be at least 250 people, including three trips in connection with the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and one with the San Francisco-based Commonwealth Club of California.
Barring disasters, Moore said, in 2015 there will be “even more, because we’ve already got departures for UCLA, Berkeley and Stanford” with other university groups bookings likely.
At San Francisco-based Geo Ex (formerly known as Geographic Expeditions) – which has been taking travelers into Iran since the early 1990s and brought 50-60 Americans there in 2013 — CEO Jean-Paul Tennant said he’s hoping to double traffic to Iran in 2014.
Though it comes across in the popular press as “an unfriendly place for Americans,” Tennant said, GeoEx travelers have returned “raving about the warmth and openness of the Iranian people. Of all the places we at GeoEx send our clients, Iran stands out as the one with the biggest gap between pre-trip perceptions and on-the-ground reality.”
Read the full story by Christopher Reynolds from Los Angeles Times.
