Turkey: Reservation for holiday increase more than 50%

Monday, January 24, 2022

Reservations for holidays in Turkey this year have probably increased by more than 50 percent, said Firuz Bağlıkaya, head of the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TÜRSAB), the Dünya newspaper reported on Monday.

The southern resort city of Antalya is currently at the forefront of foreign tourists’ preferences, along with the resort towns of Belek, Side, Kemer and Bodrum, Bağlıkaya said. Interest in holidays along Turkey’s western Aegean coastline is expected to increase, he said.

Turkey’s tourism industry, a leading foreign currency earner, is recovering from a slump in visitors in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, In the first nine months of last year, income from tourism totalled $16.8 billion and visitors 20.3 million. That compared with $8.1 billion of revenue and 11.2 million visitors in the same period of 2020.

Turkish tourism operators are hoping 2022 will be a bumper year for visitors, rivalling the record year of 2019, when the country attracted 51.9 million tourists and earned $34.5 billion. Hoteliers are hopeful that the 2019 figures are achievable, Tacettin Özden, head of the Turkish Hoteliers Federation (TÜROFED), said in December.

An increase in income from tourism this year will help alleviate investor concern about the value of the Turkish lira, which plummeted to record lows in 2021, losing 44 percent of its value.

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