Tourism Industry Extending Goals and Enthusiastically Working After the Last Two Difficult Years.

2 014 was a record setting year for tourism both in Turkey and in the world. In that year, Turkey was visited by 40 million tourists with 32 USD billion spending which was a success story for the whole industry. Globally, 1.2 billion tourists spent 1.4 USD trillion for travelling. While everybody was expecting this amazing trend would go on, 2015 and 2016 turned out to be off years. Just as much as the downturn of the global economy, global security concerns in this period fuelled this negative situation. 2016 has been a particularly challenging year for Turkish tourism. Many incidents such as aircraft conflict with Russia, refugee crisis, geopolitical turmoil around, increasing number of terror attacks and the coup attempt on July 15th, all together adversely affected tourism industry. According to the data from Turkish Republic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of foreign tourists in 2016 fell down to 25,352,213 with a 30.05 percent decrease from 2015. In the same period, total income decreased down to 22,107,440 USD with a 29.75 percent fall. Briefly, 2016 has been a year full of all possible adversities where all of the markets sourcing tourists for Turkey also had declines. Whereas the whole sector hopefully anticipating the 2017, the Reina attack on the New Years’ celebrations and the referendum process created new anxieties. Albeit all these adversities, the sector is hopeful about the 2017… TURSAB President Başaran Ulusoy comments that, despite all these problems, he sees 2017 as a period to gather strength back in order to build up Turkish tourism. Besides, the first indicators from the first months of the year are in congruence with this positive spirit… Based on the figures of Ministry of Culture and Tourism, number of foreign visitors in Turkey increased to 5,872,636 in the first four months of 2017 with a 0.96 percent rise from the last year’s same period. Considering April in particular, the number of visitors has increased 18.10 percent in comparison to the previous year. Başaran Ulusoy states that the most positive factor in this period is the increasing numbers of visitors, particularly from Russia, the second biggest source in Turkish tourism, along with Iraq, Israel, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Iran, and Georgia. TÜROFED President Osman Ayık delineates the gradual improvement following the first quarter of 2017. Pointing the increasing demand from the Russian Federation, one of the most important tourism sources of Turkey, following the recovery period in diplomatic relations, Osman Ayık also underlines the increasing numbers from Ukraine, the Turkic Republics, and from the ex-Iron Curtain Countries. Nevertheless, Mr. Ayık regards this positive trend only in terms of tourist numbers but not in terms of total revenues. TARGET FOR DOMESTIC MARKET IS 10 MILLION Besides with its biggest sources of Germany and Russia, Turkish tourism puts significant efforts into domestic tourism market as well since last year. As a reward, the industry achieved a great boost in the domestic market. Last year the number of domestic tourists topped 6 million. TÜROFED President Osman Ayık declares that they pursue to grow domestic market with similar executions just like the previous year and to reach 10 million. Regarding the difficulties to realize it in short term, Mr. Ayık adds that the ratio of domestic market in the total tourism is approx. 25 percent for competitor European countries whereas this is only about 15 percent in Turkey. 

EUROPEAN MARKET REMAINS STAGNANT Although Europe is the biggest market for Turk - ish tourism there had been a drastic fall by 2014, especially because of the security concerns. Unfortunately, this downfall goes on this year as well. Between January 1st and June 30th, 645k tourists came to Antalya from Germany which is one of the two biggest markets. German market has narrowed 24 percent against 2016 and 46 percent against 2015. With a 40 percent fall, 58k tourists came from Netherlands. 22.6k Swedish tourists and 17k Norwegian tourists visited Antalya this year with 56 percent and 53 percent decreases from last year, respectively. There has also been a 12 percent fall in tourists from Iran. In spite of the fact that the downfall continues in European markets for the first six months, Başaran Ulusoy stresses to wait until the end of summer to see the real final outcome in these markets. Ulusoy states, “If we can manage to at - tract the last minute deciders to head to Turkey, we might also reverse the downfall in European market.” The tourism industry, seemingly, will outper - form 2016 in 2017 in terms of tourist numbers unless there is any other adversity. Following 2017, the industry aims at sustaining the growth of Turkish tourism with a serious pace in 2018 and further.