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Qeshm Island, like its smaller but better-known neighbour Kish Island, doesn't feature in the travel bucket-lists of many international tourists.
Of the 397,000 people who flew to the island in the Strait of Hormuz last year, three quarters were Iranian nationals.
Qeshm's Dayrestan Airport ranks as only the 13th largest gateway in Iran by aircraft movements, despite being the main entry point for one of the country's much-touted free-trade zones. No foreign carriers fly there on a regular basis.
"Our customers are Iranian tourists mostly," confirmed Mahmoud Shekarabi, chief executive of Qeshm Air, the airline that provides two-thirds of seating capacity at the island. "Due to the sanctions there were some problems for businessmen to fly here [in the past].
"But I believe there's going to be changes. Before, there was tourism and just maybe some students. Now it's going to be businessmen, students, tourists, families...
