Nearly 13 mln foreign tourists visit Antalya

ANTALYA

The number of foreign tourists visiting the province of Antalya on the Mediterranean coast by air increased by 48 percent in the January-October period from a year ago to 12.7 million.

Foreign tourist arrivals also reached an all-time-high October figure, according to data from the Provincial Culture and Tourism Directorate.

In the first ten months of 2020, 3.3 million foreign tourists arrived in the city by air and tourist numbers rose to 8.6 million in the same period of 2021.

In October alone, 1.72 million foreign vacationers visited Antalya, up by 7 percent from a year earlier. This was the highest number of tourists the province ever received for the month of October.

Russians were top visitors. Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, from January to October, 2.83 million Russian nationals arrived in Antalya by air. Germans constituted the second largest group at 2.67 million, followed by Britons at 1 million.

Tourists from Poland and the Netherlands accounted for 6.1 percent and 3.6 percent of all visitors in the first ten months of 2022. Kazakh, Danish and Israelis were other major visitors.

Türkiye recently upgraded its tourist and tourism revenue targets for 2022 from 47 million and $37 billion to 50 million and $44 billion.

In January-September, 34.8 million foreign tourists visited Türkiye, up 98 percent from a year ago. Including Turkish citizens residing abroad, tourist arrivals grew by 87 percent to 40.3 million in the same period.

Separately, the local social security authority reported that the number of people employed in Antalya’s tourism sector increased from 258,338 in July 2021 to 291,372 in July this year, an annual increase of 14 percent.

The authority also said that more than 20,000 people from 130 countries are employed in Antalya in different sectors.

Those foreign employees 7,800 are male and 13,000 are female.

Kyrgyz nationals make up the largest group of foreign workers with 4,190, followed by Russians at 3,316 and Kazakhs at 2,884. Some 1,913 Ukrainians and 1,216 Indonesians were also employed in businesses in Antalya in July.