The 6th meeting of ECO senior experts and the 4th ECO Ministerial Meeting on Tourism were held from 12 to 13 December 2022 in the city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, online with the presence of ECO member countries and the ECO Cultural Institute.
At this event, the President of the ECO Cultural Institute, Mr. Murodjon Buriboev, referring to the inseparable relationship between tourism and culture, called for more attention from ECO member countries to cultural tourism and considered culture as one of the main factors of economic development.
He further made suggestions regarding the need for education to improve the level of cultural tourism in the ECO region, preparing the ECO Cultural Institute for virtual visits to museums and tourist attractions in the region, standardizing tourist destinations, and holding Nowruz celebrations in the capitals of ECO member countries to attract cultural tourists.
In the final statement of the meeting, the participants of the Samarkand Summit emphasized the need to strengthen cooperation as a key element for the successful implementation of regional strategies and measures for the sustainable development of tourism.
In this meeting, Uzbekistan's green city and Turkey's Erzurum were selected and introduced as the tourism capitals of the ECO region for the years 2024 and 2025, respectively.