Kyle Olson -AjamMC.com
Iranian and international planners promoted tourism as a means of stimulating development via conservation, construction, and bringing foreign currency into the country through the hospitality and service sectors. The tourism itineraries designed by Iranian and international planners in the 1960s and 70s swiftly became standardized and have remained largely intact to this day, despite the massive changes to Iran’s society and place in the world in the decades since.
The impact of these plans can be seen in a collection of promotional materials from this earlier period of thriving international tourism that was recently acquired by the AjamMC Digital Archive. The collection includes a postcard, two travel brochures, and a hotelier’s guide to Esfahan dating to Spring 1971, reflecting the planning visions, aid agreements, and optimism of the time. These documents are not only a window into the past of economic policy but also illustrate how heritage became so important to Iran’s tourism industry today.
The items in the AjamMC Digital Archive belonged to Theresa Howard Carter, a trailblazing archaeologist of Southwest Asia and North Africa and professor at Johns Hopkins University active in the field from the 1950s until the 1980s. They relate to Carter’s trip to Iran in April-May 1971, a three-week archaeological group tour sponsored by the Penn Museum. Her ostensible objective—in addition to sight-seeing—was to assess the situation on the coast of the Persian Gulf between Bushehr and Abadan and to make connections to support a permit for survey and excavation to be conducted in Winter 1971-72. Ultimately, Carter’s April 1971 permit application for fieldwork was denied by the Iranian government and she never conducted archaeological fieldwork in Iran.
Her initial tour went as planned, however, with the itinerary almost exactly matching the central corridor designed by Iranian and international tourism planners of the time. As a consumer of a chartered tour, Carter stayed in the finest hotels and visited the most heavily invested-in heritage sites. It should perhaps be no surprise that an archaeologist would be drawn to the areas of Iran that feature its most spectacular historical monuments. But, the charismatic sites that she visited were key in the multilateral international cooperative plans that structured the development of the tourism industry in Iran—and which continue to be central to its tourism infrastructure today.