A group of Chinese tourists visited Azerbaijan for the first time after the Covid-19 pandemic, Azernews reports, citing Azerbaijan's State Tourism Agency.

Recall that, in 2019, the Azerbaijani State Tourism Agency and the Chinese Culture and Tourism Ministry had signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the simplification of group visits of Chinese tourists to Azerbaijan. Besides, Azerbaijan has been included in the list of countries that Chinese tourists can visit.

The Tourism Agency noted that in the coming years, it is planned to intensively resume marketing and promotion work in China and to hold events aimed at increasing the number of Chinese tourists. Within the framework of the simplified visa regime for citizens of the People's Republic of China, the "ASAN Visa" electronic system is applied. Currently, flights from Urumqi to Baku are carried out once a week.

According to the Azerbaijan's State Tourism Agency, 1,279 people have traveled from China to Azerbaijan in the first quarter of 2023, which is 3.5 times more compared to the same period last year, and a 40 percent recovery compared to the same period of 2019.