Turkiye continues its strong performance in terms of attracting overseas tourists for the seventh straight month in July 2022. The country has so far received 23 million foreign tourists, with July reporting a 53 pc growth over the previous year.

Turkiye Tourism continues to be on a roll. According to latest figures released by the Turkiye Tourism, the country has attracted over 23 million international visitors in the first seven months of the year. The growth has been sustained through the year as the foreign tourist arrivals jumped by 53 pc in July from a year earlier and even higher than the corresponding figure in July 2020.

This has paved the way for the country to meet or even exceed the target of USD 37 billion foreign tourist receipts in the year. The international visitors to Turkey leapt to 6.67 million in July, mostly on the back of wealthy Russian visitors who opted for Turkey, due to flight restrictions applied by Western countries after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The numbers of German and British visitors also rose strongly, contributing to the strong rise in Turkish tourism industry. The meetings and events industry has also seen a sharp rise and it is expected to see more boosts.

According to the Culture and Tourism Ministry of Turkiye government, over the past seven months since January, the country has seen a rise of 128.28 pc in tourist arrivals. Turkiye’s largest source market continued to be Germans, who accounted for nearly 3 million arrivals in the seven-month period, a growth of 137.36 pc compared to the same period last year. Next on the list was another key source market, Russia, that accounted for 2.1 million visitors and the United Kingdom followed with 1.8 million tourists.

The ministry says that by adding Turkish nationals living abroad who also visited the country during the period, the total figure of foreign arrivals touched 26.1 million. The commercial capital of Türkiye, Istanbul, retained its top spot as the destination of preference for foreign tourists, with a huge share of 36.9 pc of all foreign visitors, or 8.5 million in all. The Mediterranean resort town of Antalya was next favourite with international visitors as 27.6 pc or more than 6.3 million tourists made a beeline to the chic city on the Riviera. Edirne in northwestern Türkiye, bordering both Bulgaria and Greece, followed with a 10.9 pc share, or 2.5 million visitors.

Encouraged by the performance in the second quarter of the year, Turkiye’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy has already raised the target number of tourists from 45 million to 47 million through the year and also the tourism receipts to USD 37 billion, up from USD 35 billion.

So far, the country seems to be on track to meet the revised target also. Turkiye registered a 190 pc leap in tourist spending to USD 8.72 billion in April-June quarter, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat). 

Bulent Bulbuloglu, Vice Chairman of Turkish Hoteliers Federation says that the July figures were strong and so is August. When the Turkish Tourism Authority look at the current bookings, number of flights and seats allocated by tour operators for September, October and November, it seems that ministry’s targets will be achieved, he adds. Along with high demand from Britons and Germans, Bulbuloglu pointed out wealthy Russians newly coming to Turkish market. Wealthy Russians who used to travel to more expensive destinations such as Spain, France, Italy and Greece have also turned to Turkiye due to flight restrictions by Western countries. As a result, as many as as 80 flights head from Russia to Antalya every day and this number could rise even further as the outlook for the next two months was also optimistic, adding that he expected the season to be extended until November.

Not just the Europeans, even American tourists are streaming to Turkiye in unprecedented numbers. The number of Americans visiting Türkiye in the first half of 2022 is up 76.8 pc over the same period of 2019 before the pandemic struck.

“This is an extraordinary and exciting result,” says Yalçın Lokmanhekim, the General Manager of TGA, Türkiye Tourism Promotion and Development Agency, underscoring not only Turkish tourism’s recovery from the pandemic, but also highlighting how Americans are vacationing in Türkiye in record-breaking numbers. 

Number one destination in Türkiye for Americans is the city of Istanbul, with phenomenal interest in discovering other parts of this country that spans both Europe and Asia. After Istanbul, Americans’ favorite destinations currently include the Turkish Aegean coast, the city of Izmir, and the unique landscapes of Cappadocia in the east of the country. From January to June 2019, a total of 213,000 Americans had visited Türkiye, while the number in the corresponding period this year is 377,000, says the ministry.