Tourists to live Iran life with new service

Switzerland’s OrientStay has launched an Airbnb-style accommodation service in Iran for people to list, find, and rent lodging at a time when the Middle Eastern country is experiencing a tourism boom, a new report says. 

The company has currently 200 flats on offer in nine cities across Iran only two weeks after beginning operation, its director Mehrzad Khoi said on the sidelines of the second Europe-Iran Forum which opened in Geneva Thursday.

He said the plan is for people to come forward to add their properties to his company’s website.

OrientStay is only available to incoming tourists and not resident Iranians. It offers an alternative to hotels and guesthouses booked through travel agencies and tour operators, he told the Guardian.

“Our concept is to offer foreign tourists an authentic and real experience of Iran. We want them to see the real people, which is usually the biggest surprise for them,” Khoi said.

“We want foreign tourists to experience our way of life, our culture, and not as part of ready-made, 10-member tours. We don’t want them to just see the nice ancient monuments, we want them to see the people,” he added.

Iran has a total of 1,500 hotels which are running short of accommodation as more foreigners want to visit.

The country’s hospitality market is immensely underdeveloped and the country is in need of brisk development of its tourism infrastructure in order to cope with the situation. 

The conclusion of the nuclear talks in July has unleashed a jet-setting spree by international entrepreneurs and business leaders as well as state politicians in their hunt for new business opportunities in the country of 80 million people.

International hotel groups from several countries are pushing to boost their portfolios in Iran which is being tagged as the most lucrative emerging hospitality development market.

Last week, France’s AccorHotels signed a deal with Iran’s Tourism Financial Group to run two hotels near Imam Khomeini International Airport, marking the first foray by a major foreign entity into the country’s hospitality market since 1979.

The French group wants to book 100 more hotels in Iran which “has absolutely everything, in terms of very rich history, extraordinary geography and a true sense of hospitality”, its Chairman and Chief Executive Sebastien Bazin said.    

Iranian officials say the country plans to attract 20 million foreign tourists in order to generate up to 30 billion of revenues a year by 2025.

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