Around 1,000 tourism facilities up for sale in Turkey: CHP deputy

CHP Ankara deputy Akın Üstündağ has said Turkey’s tourism and agricultural sectors have been hit dramatically due to recent problems with Russia, Turkey’s second largest source of foreign tourists, as well as escalating security concerns, adding that many tourism facilities have seen massive cancelations in reservations this year. 

Though tourism industry leaders have been talking about the potential damage of both the Russian crisis and security problems for months, their warnings have taken on a very real face, as a total of 908 facilities have been put for sale in the Aegean coastline for around 9 billion Turkish Liras. “We have seen the largest volume of sale ads in the Aegean province of Muğla with a total of 349 facilities on sale for around 4.7 billion liras. The sector has contracted by 35 percent over this year…European tourists have turned towards Greece, Portugal and Spain. Besides, many Western countries have issued security warnings about Turkey amid terror attacks.

When we have added our deteriorating ties with Russia to this equation, we have seen a sharp rise in reservation cancelations,” he said.  

Üstündağ also said agricultural producers have also faced losses in exports over this year. 

“Muğla exported around 150,000 tons of fresh fruits to Russia last year, but their exports have now been about to stop. Only the district of Fethiye sent more than 30 trucks of fresh fruits and vegetables to Russia each day until the crisis erupted between Turkey and Russia last November. Russia has closed the doors to our exporters. Our daily loss is around 1 million liras. We all hope the issues will be resolved as soon as possible,” he added. 

Tourism revenues in Turkey declined 14.3 percent to $6.57 billion in the final quarter of 2015, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) said on Jan. 29. 

In 2015 as a whole, tourism revenues fell 8.3 percent, reaching $31.46 billion amid the decrease in the number of Russian and European tourists.