Page 49 - IRANRptFeb22

Hotel closure rate in Iran has hit 30% amid pandemic says federation
coastal countries. Also, government departments are working on the issue of tourism development in the Caspian Sea basin along the Astrakhan-Baku-Anzali-Turkmenbashi-Aktau route, with the involvement of a public-private partnership mechanism for this task,” Zakharova added.
Some 30% of hotels in Iran have shut down since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the country in February, the Federation of Hotel Owners has said.
A collapse in bookings and lack of support provided to hotel owners to stay solvent saw many hotels either forced to close or mothball operations, it added.
“The industry has suffered Iranian rial 85tn ($304mn at the free market rate) in losses because of the pandemic and the radical decline in domestic and international travel,” federation representative Jamshid Hamzehzadeh was quoted as saying.
Some 70% of jobs have been lost in Iran’s hotel industry in the past year, with local tourism essentially non-existent on a short-term perspective, he added. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 240,000 people were directly employed and 550,000 were indirectly employed in the Iranian tourism industry, industry estimates suggest.
9.1.6 TMT sector news
Iran places import ban on several mobile models
Mobile phone shipments worth more than $2.5bn make up 8% of Iran’s imports in first eight Persian
Iranian authorities have placed an outright import ban on several Alcatel, Nokia and Xiaomi phone models citing a “technical fault,” the Financial Tribune reported on January 29.
According to local media reporting on the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) decision, a total of 27 models in all have been found to have an “inbuilt fault” that means calls to the emergency services number have no regionalisation. However, there is speculation that the move by the CRA is targeted at reining in the dominance of China’s Xiaomi, a mobile brand that has stormed the Iranian market in recent years and reached pole position in 2021.
Models including Xiaomi’s recently released Mi 11 model variants, including the Lite and T models, and models from other Chinese brands including OnePlus and Alcatel are among phones barred. However, brands including Huawei and Samsung, do not feature on the list of banned phones.
This latest ban follows a ban in June, which saw other models of Xiaomi and models of RealMe and Nokia booted out of the market.
Separately, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered officials to “decisively and ruthlessly” stem the flow of luxury goods imported into the country illegally.
“Luxury goods that have been smuggled in must be thrown into compactors and crushers,” Khamenei said on his official Twitter account.
Khamenei added that the black market presence of the items in Iran, caused by US sanctions that prevent legitimate imports of many popular foreign brands, hinder domestic industry.
Mobile phone shipments with a value topping $2.5bn made up 8% of Iran’s imports in the first eight months of the Persian calendar year (March 21-November 21), IRIB reported on December 1. No other import category had a higher value, it added.
The value marked an increase of 111% y/y, the media outlet wrote, adding that official mobile phone shipments in volume terms rose by 47% y/y over the
49 IRAN Country Report February 2022 www.intellinews.com