25 million domestic travelers spent $4 billion in 2018 third quarter: Official data

ANKARA

Around 25 million residents in Turkey made domestic trips in the third quarter of 2018, according to official data made public yesterday.

Some 24.9 million people traveled, and domestic trips with one or more than one overnights decreased by 1.5 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year, declining to 32.5 million, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

The average number of overnights was 10.2 in the same period, and average expenditure per trip was 650 Turkish Liras ($125), with a total spending of 21.1 billion liras ($4.05 billion), according to the data. The total spending was up by 18.6 percent compared to the same period of the previous year.

The primary purpose of traveling was “visiting relatives” with 58.9 percent, followed by “travel, leisure, holiday” with 36.4 percent and “health” with 2.2.

Domestic tourism expenditures were composed of individual expenditures and package tour expenditures. In the quarter, while 88.7 percent of domestic tourism expenditure was individual with 18.7 billion liras ($3.6 billion), 2.4 billion liras ($460 million) of the expenditures, making up 11.3 percent of the total, came from package tours.

According to the number of overnights by type of accommodation, domestic visitors stayed mostly at the “house of a friend or relative,” with 221.2 million overnights. While “own house” took second place with 63.3 million overnights, “hotel” took third place with 25.9 million overnights.