The festival devoted to the World Tourism Day, which is marked on 27 September, was held in Tashkent on Tuesday.

The purpose of the forum was to bring together young people studying tourism and tourist companies and organizations for an exchange of opinions and experience, UzA notes.

According to Uzbektourism national company, the number of tourists visiting Uzbekistan last year increased by 6.9% to 1.3 million people.

Today about 800 enterprises operate in the field of tourism, including more than 450 tourism operators. There are almost 300 hotels in the country, with almost 30 commissioned in the first half of this year.

The tourist companies are looking into development of the new types of tourism like sports and ecological tourism.