Hotel occupancy rates hit almost 100 pct during 9-day Eid holiday: Association

“We saw that nearly 700,000 local tourists visited the Aegean and Mediterranean resorts during the nine-day public holiday for Eid al-Adha,” said the head of the Hoteliers Federation of Turkey (TÜROFED), Osman Ayık, as quoted by Anadolu Agency on Sept. 18. 

Saying that the Eid holiday was the last opportunity for local tourists with children to enjoy a long holiday this year, Ayık noted that they served to revive the struggling tourism sector. 

“As tourism representatives, we have noticed that Turkey’s local tourist potential is over 10 million. In this vein, we will work harder to lure more local tourists by next year… We can recover our losses in other markets by attracting more local tourists, especially middle-aged and retired ones,” he added. 

Ayık noted that hotel occupancy rates across coastal areas, mainly in southern Antalya, reached around 100 percent in hotels which were open. 

“We do not know the exact numbers, but we have recently seen a significant rise in the number of foreign arrivals from Russia and Germany, Turkey’s largest tourism market… We believe that this trend will continue in the coming months,” he added. 

Foreign tourist arrivals to Turkey fell 30.3 percent in the first seven months of the year, with 14.2 million people arriving during the period, data from the Tourism Ministry showed in late August. 

Tourism representatives have repeatedly voiced their praise about normalization of ties with Russia, which was the second largest market for the Turkish tourism sector until recently. 

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree that lifted a ban on charter air transportation between Russia and Turkey on Aug. 28, after months of strained ties.

Turkish tourism representatives have believed that they could recover some 15 percent of their losses in the Russian market after the flights begin.