Over 1 mln visit Amasra in 8 months

BARTIN

Over 1 million people visited Amasra, a small town in the Black Sea province of Bartın, over the first eight months of this year, the local mayor has said. 

“There are more and more visitors coming to this amazing place that has very unique side to it. We’ve had over 1 million visitors in the last eight months, and 300,000 have had accommodation. It was a little less from our goals but still, it was a very efficient season. Especially, on national and religious holidays, our town welcomes more and more visitors,” Amasra Mayor Recai Çakır told state-run Anadolu Agency on Sept. 24.

“[Especially] for July and August, we had many tourists in our town. Primarily, we have to expand the [tourism] season to the whole year with outdoor sports and cultural tourism,” said Çakır.

Amasra has a mere population of 6,500 people, but is an important place not only for its historical structures and natural wonders, but also its cuisine. It attracts tourists from all over the world every season.

Amasra is home to many historical works from the Hellenistic, Archaic, Rome, Byzantium, Genoese, Seljuk and Ottoman periods. But alongside that, it also has pure coves and clean beaches.

Apart from summer seasons and the weekends, there are generally accommodation problems for tourists in the town during the Ramadan and Eid holidays. In 2014, some 600,000 people visited the town, but only in the first eight months of this year, this figure reached over 1 million people.

“Our town has been hosting 150 times more tourists than its population,” said the mayor.

Çakır said that not only word-of-mouth recommendations but also the advertising activities of the municipality and non-governmental organizations helped make the town a tourist hotspot.