Nearly 35 mln foreign tourists visited Türkiye in January-September

ANKARA

Foreign tourist arrivals in January-September rose by 98 percent from a year ago, while the country’s tourism revenues in the third quarter leaped 27 percent, separate data showed on Oct. 27.

Including Turkish citizens residing abroad, Türkiye welcomed a total of 40.25 million visitors in the first nine months of the year.

Germans constituted the largest group of foreign holidaymakers in this period. The number of German tourists visiting Türkiye increased from 2.3 million January-September last year to 4.53 million.

Russians came second. Some 3.9 million Russian nationals vacationed in the country in the first nine months, up from 3.46 million a year ago.

The number of tourists from the U.K. soared from only 137,000 last year to 2.82 million in January-September 2022.
Bulgarians and Iranians ranked fourth and fifth at 2.06 million and 1.84 million, respectively.

In September alone, total foreign tourist arrivals increased by 55.8 percent from the same month of last year to 5.5 million, losing some steam from August, when foreign tourist visits grew 58 percent on an annual basis to 6.3 million. Last month, Russians topped the list of foreign visitors at 860,000, down from 996,000 in September 2021. Germans and Britons ranked second and third at 677,000 and 457,000, respectively.

Tourism revenues rise 27 percent

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) separately reported on Oct. 27 that Türkiye’s tourism revenues in the third quarter leaped 27.2 percent from the same quarter of 2021 to $17.95 billion.

Turkish expats accounted for 14.3 percent of the revenues.

Individual expenditures constituted $12.56 billion of total tourism income, while package tour expenditures were $5.39 billion in the July-September period.

Some 75 percent of foreigners visited Türkiye for travel, entertainment and cultural purposes as well as sportive activities. The second biggest reason was visiting relatives and friends at 17.8 percent, followed by shopping at 2.6 percent.

The per capita average expenditure of visitors was $855 in the third quarter, down from $1,036 in the same quarter of 2021, while the average expenditure per night dropped from $91 to $89.

Türkiye revised its forecasts for foreign tourist arrivals and tourism revenues to 47 million and $37 billion, respectively.
Earlier this month, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that Türkiye is likely to attract more foreign tourists and generate more tourism revenues than foreseen in revised targets.