YEREVAN. – Starting from 2014, Air France will conduct six Yerevan-Paris flights per week and seven flights per week in July and August, head of SABERATOURS–SEVAN company said.

Levon Baghdasaryan is confident that opening of new flights will contribute to development of tourism as well as economic and political relations between Armenia and France.

French Ambassador to Armenia Henri Reynaud welcomed the initiative and expressed gratitude to Mr. Baghdasaryan. The diplomat said France welcomes Armenian tourists with open arms.

“France is waiting for you. To visit France you are better to give preference to EXECUTIVE- Travel,” Ambassador told reporters on Thursday.

Asked by the Armenia News-NEWS.am how he assesses the development of tourism between the countries, Henri Reynaud said Armenia and France are actively developing tourism.

“Despite the fact there is no statistics at the moment, I want to note that it came to the need to book Yerevan-Paris flights beforehand. This means that more and more French tourists are visiting Armenia. These are the fans of cultural tourism. The more Armenia will present the country in France, the greater the flow of tourists from France will be. I can say that every year the number of tourists from France increases by 10-15 percent. According to approximate data, Armenia is visited by 15-20 thousands of tourists from France,” the diplomat said.

Varuzhan Sargsyan, the founder of «SABERATOURS - SEVAN» company, said in order to increase the number of tourists it is necessary to solve visa problems.

In response to this statement, the Ambassador noted that as compared with other diplomatic missions in Armenia, Embassy of France has the best position in terms of granting short-term visas, if the citizens immediately provide all necessary documents.

Henri Reynaud also added that visa facilitation and readmission agreement that was recently approved by the Armenian parliament will halve the amount paid for visa fee.