Tourism attracted 2.3 million people to Iran in 2009. Iran plans to have 20 million tourists annually by 2015 (including domestic tourism).

The landscape of Iran is diverse, providing a range of activities from hiking and skiing in the Alborz mountains, to beach holidays by the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Over the next five years a number of tourism-friendly infrastructure projects will be undertaken on the Persian Gulf island of Kish, which at present attracts around 1m visitors per year, the majority of whom are Iranian. In general, Iranians are warm, friendly and generous individuals with a strong interest in foreigners and other cultures.

Tourism in Iran as an industry has high capacities for development and growth. According to UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization), Iran has the tenth place of historical attractions and the fifth place of natural attractions in the world. Regarding security, Iran is one of the safest countries in the Middle East and in the world for foreign tourists

The most up-to-date figures from the World Tourism Organization for the origin of visitors to Iran show that building up visitors from the Islamic and wider Asian world will have to start from a low base. Around three-quarters of those entering Iran in 1999 came from Europe. Of those, as might be expected, only a minority were from western European countries.

According to Iranian officials, in a change of trend, about 1,659,000 foreign tourists visited Iran in 2004; most came from Asian countries, including the republics of Central Asia, while a small share (about 10%) came from North America and the European Union including Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, France, Belgium. The most popular tourist destinations are Esfahan, Mashhad, and Shiraz. There is undoubtedly great scope for increased visitors from the Islamic world, and possibly also from non-Muslim countries with which Iran is developing business and political links, such as China and India.

The majority of the 300,000 tourist visas granted in 2003 were obtained by Asian Muslims, who presumably intended to visit important pilgrimage sites in Mashhad and Qom. Several organized tours from Germany, France, UK and other European countries come to Iran annually to visit archaeological sites and monuments.

From 2004, the country experienced a 100-percent growth in foreign tourist arrivals until mid-2008 when the number of foreign arrivals surged up to 2.5 million. Specially, there has been an enormous increase in the number of German tourists traveling to Iran in 2008.

About 750 thousand foreign tourists visited Iran in 2006, whereas about 42 million tourists traveled all around the world in this year.

The World Travel and Tourism Council claims that business and personal tourism rose by 11.3% and 4.6%, respectively, in real terms in 2007, with the growth in personal tourism only modestly below that of the preceding year.

About 2.3 million tourists have visited Iran in 2009 according to Iran's Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization. About 70,000 of the tourists were from Turkey, 3,000 from Germany, and 3,000 from China, with the rest being from other countries.

It shows about one- tenth of all tourists belongs to Iran, concerning different kinds of different tourism attractions and the existence of 1million and 200 thousand historic works in Iran, this figure is very low. According the statistics in 2007 , regarding the development of tourism industry, Asia with 9 percent , Africa with 7 percent , Europe with 6 percent and the United States with 4 percent have got the highest growth. Among 25 major countries in the field of tourism industry, only 4 Islamic countries such as Malaysia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been active, while the conditions of Iran for attracting tourists are more suitable than these countries but Iran could not have gained the reasonable portion from incomes of tourism industry in the Middle East.

According to the experts, this industry has not got its appropriate level in Iran despite its status because the suitable economic infrastructures were not prepared for attracting the investors in constructing hotels and other structures in this domain and the investors are not aware of the present grounds and conditions, weak advertising and broadcasting, incorrect and negative news about Iran are among other reasons.