She is sitting on a bench in front of the fountain on Parapet [ed β officially, Fountain Square]. It is already evening. Parvana works mostly with Arabs. Sometimes, she says, she has Iranians too, in addition to Azerbaijanis. But, she says, Arabs pay more. I open the calculator application on my phone and enter some numbers. The average salary in the country is dollars a month. And so, working only five days a week and meeting with one client a day, Parvana can earn dollars a month, a sum which is unbelievable for a job which does not require an education or special skills.
In comparison, a janitor might make 12 dollars a day in a best case scenario. The visa regime was simplified for countries of the Persian Gulf and several other Arab countries in According to official data, this results in tourists arriving daily from these countries, says economist Toghrul Mashalli.
When a direct flight opened from Kuwait, passenger traffic increased eight-fold. Experts have named several reasons for the mass arrival of Arabs in Azerbaijan. For example, Azerbaijan as an alternative to Turkey.
After the terror attacks and bloody events in Turkey, tourists who refused to go there started coming to Azerbaijan. Today, the majority of the hotels are filled with Arabs, and in September this situation will be at its peak. Arabs, for the most part, stay in 4 and 5-star hotels. And tourists from Iran prefer 3-star hotels. Hotels employees speak out on the subtleties of the hotel business. They cannot move around freely at home nor have fun β there are few ways of entertaining oneself.
And for that reason they are attracted to Azerbaijan. And especially the bars. Tourists, including Arab tourists, walk about here with their families both during the day and night. Parvana says that they are the real hunters, not the Arab tourists.
