Iran's Mecca, Mashhad, has big say in tourism
The holy city of Mashhad is revered as the spiritual capital of Iran which takes in millions of travelers each year from inside the country and beyond Iran's borders. It is the Mecca of Iran where Shiite Muslims turn to for the sake of their Imam.
City officials say that they are eager to boost religious tourism and spark a rise in the number of arrivals from home and from abroad but it makes it necessary for the shrine city to get more prepared and render still more services to pilgrims who come to Mashhad.
Imam Reza is loved by Iranians and the city which is home to the Imam is a center of attraction for people and officials alike in Iran. His shrine shows the face of Iran and the great importance Iranians attach to the household of the Muslim Prophet.
The holy city of Mashhad has recently hosted a group of reporters and journalists from different media organizations (7 June 2012) in a bid to explain at a national level what is going on in the shrine city to offer more facilities to citizens and attract more tourists.
The meeting with news crew mainly aimed to offer a proper model of interactions of the urban management and to introduce Mashhad as the spiritual capital of Iran and the cultural capital of the world of Islam.
The city's mayor, Mohammad Pezhman, said in the meeting that Mashhad has national and cross-national roles and functions, adding the questions of the holy city are regarded as the issues of all Iranians and those of Muslims in other countries.
He said people's expectations should be met in order to have public satisfaction and added that Mashhad has many hidden potential which can give a shot in the arm to the religious tourism when tapped into.
The mayor went on to say that Iran needs to wean itself off an oil-driven economy and pay attention to other sources of income, adding that religious tourism can earn the country more and more revenues.
Reporters were also taken to different development projects in the city, among them the metro, to get a first-hand account of what the municipality is doing to serve people in Mashhad and Imam Reza's guests.
Mashhad intends to grow in a bid to have a spotless record of entertaining the tourists in the best manner possible.
The city officials are also planning to hold a festival which aims to help develop Mashhad and solve the problems the religious metropolis is currently facing. They want to upgrade the interaction between the urban management and media and to identify the elite for raising and studying city affairs. The festival also intends to put focus on media ethics when it comes to releasing pieces of news on the urban management.
The urban management of Mashhad will be reflected in media and this is the main aim of the national festival.
Chief among the topics the festival will discuss are people's participation and investment, urban services, traffic and transportation, as well as urbanization and architecture.
People love Mashhad which is the final resting place of the eighth Imam, and city authorities are doing what they can to win tourists' satisfaction and funnel more finances to the country's coffers. This requires for the assistance of all those who care for the city.
Material and immaterial aid, even if small, could be big when collected together. A drop does not appear so big but it has the capacity to join the ocean.
Small steps are needed to do big jobs.