Dear ali,
Here are my answers for your questions from my little experience here:
1. To determine the best way of finding local employees is subject to the requirements:
A. Paid:
- Hawler news paper. It is in Kurdish
- erbilmanpower.com "recruiting agency".
B. free:
-kodojobs.com "posts can be made in Kurdish, Arabic or English".
These are the most popular tools here
Salaries scales; 500-5000 US a month, believe it or not
of course this will subject to your requirements, benefits, business category, nature of work and incentives.
2. I assume that your customers would be companies, in this case:
- Yes there is yellow pages for Iraq includes KR.
- I would suggest you pick up a FREE version of KURDISTAN REGION COMPANIES DIRECTORY 2011/2012. It is available in Kurdish, Arabic and English. Distributed all over Erbil, you should be able to find it at the hotel where you may be staying.
3. Like any other country in MENA; higher class people are eager to travel. your market can be expanded to include the middle class citizens if you have wide variety, choices and packages that can meet expectations of people with different financial capabilities.
4. There are a lot of extremely wealthy people that can afford anything and upto any exciting experience, and in KR I would say that the middle class is real wide. Best thing here is that people like spending money so all you have to do is make whatever you are selling sound/look worth spending money on.
These are the answers to your questions again; from my little experience here. I wish I saw your questions earlier, I hope you still can use these info. Good luck