“A total of 5,703,679 people made overnight stays during the month of Khordad at authorized accommodation centers such as hotels, traditional lodging houses, eco-lodge units, pilgrim's guest houses, apartment hotels, guest houses, and tourist centers,” ILNA quoted Vali Teymouri as saying on Thursday.

The Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health has announced new guidelines and instructions to ramp up the safety of travels across the coronavirus-hit country.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Teymouri referred to national days-off in Khordad, which made the Iranian month fit for more travels, saying “During Khordad, over 11,000 surveillance visits were made to tourist facilities including accommodation centers, restaurants, catering businesses, travel agencies, restaurants across 31 provinces of the country, which shows the ministry’s simultaneous attention to travel and travel safety.”

Months ago, many countries, including the Islamic Republic, started imposing travel restrictions to help curb the spread of novel coronavirus, restricting air, road, and rail travel to a great extent.

Some experts expect Iran to achieve a tourism boom after coronavirus contained, believing its impact would be temporary and short-lived for a country that ranked the third fastest-growing tourism destination in 2019. The latest available data show eight million tourists visited the Islamic Republic during the first ten months of the past Iranian calendar year (started March 21, 2019).