Jamshid Hamzezadeh said the decision by the leading website for booking hotels across the world (booking.com) to cut its cooperation with Iranian hotels will not seriously impact Iran’s tourism industry because the volume of bookings of Iranian hotels through the website was not considerable at all. 



“Even before the new restriction, Iranian hotels could barely establish direct cooperation with the company behind the website given the obstacles created for Iran’s financial transactions with the outside world,” he said in an interview with ISNA.

Hamzezadeh underlined that though the cooperation with booking website had some advantages for Iranian hotels, they faced some problems which no efforts were made by the website to remove them.

Following the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Booking.com said in an email to Iranian hotels that despite its strong interest in maintaining its cooperation with them, it has to cut the ties because of the US domestic laws.

Booking.com is a travel website and meta-search engine for lodging reservations of Dutch origin. Since 2005, it has been owned and operated by US-based Booking Holdings and is currently seated in Amsterdam. The website lists more than 1,534,024 properties in 226 countries and territories and books _1,200,000 room nights per day.

/SR