Recovery in tourism returned us to 2012 levels
Asignificant rise in tourist numbers visiting Turkey has occurred in the summer months in comparison with the previous summer. The number of foreign tourists rose by 43% in June and by 46% in both July and August. The increase for the first eight months was 26.4%. But what is leading this increase? The answer is crystal clear: better relations with Russia. The improvement in the relationship between Turkey and Russia led to an almost 10-fold increase in the number of Russian tourists. In the first eight months of last year, only 336,000 Russian tourists visited Turkey but over the same period this year the number surpassed 3.3 million.
A total of 4.6 million more foreign tourists visited Turkey than in the same period last year. With 3.3 million of this number from Russia it is clear where to look for the increase in tourists. Turkish tourism had serious problems last year mainly due to diplomatic problems with Russia and this year Russians have largely accounted for the increase. As for other countries important to the Turkish tourism sector, such as Germany or United Kingdom, we see that even the levels experienced last year were hard to meet.
Better than last year but…
Despite depending heavily on one country, there has been a respectable rise in the number of foreign tourists, over a quarter, for the first eight months of the year. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the tourism sector’s problems are over as we overcame such a sharp decline from 2016. Indeed, the number of foreign tourists in the first eight months rose to 22 million compared with 17.4 million for the same period last year.
But what about earlier years? The numbers for this year are still much below the figures for the first eight months of 2013, 2014 and 2015. The only level we could catch up to this year was 2012. In other words, we lost some tourists and later won them back. So, Turkey hasn’t been able to meet the tourist numbers of even three years ago. Therefore, simply comparing numbers to the previous year and saying everything is fine is pure folly.
Receipts also troublesome
The number of foreign tourists did increase by more than 25% but it’s a far different story for tourism receipts. Tourism receipts for the first seven months increased by 5% in comparison with the previous year. But there was a 22% rise in the number of tourist. The biggest reason for such a large gap between the number of tourists and tourism receipts is the fact that the new tourists spent less money. Some countries’ citizens spend a lot less but we should still view them as tourists and be thankful they chose Turkey.