Azerbaijan sets 3.8 million visitor goal as tourism faces structural hurdles

President Ilham Aliyev signed Azerbaijan's first comprehensive State Tourism Development Programme on August 20, setting a target of 3.8 million annual visitors by 2030, from 2.57 million today. The H1 2026 data, showing a 10.3% year-on-year decline, explains why the urgency is real. So do the programme's own diagnoses of what is not working.