Over 14 million foreign tourists visited Türkiye in 5 months

ANKARA

Foreign tourist arrivals in Türkiye increased nearly 24 percent in January-May from a year ago to more than 14 million, the Tourism and Culture Ministry has said.

Including Turkish citizens residing abroad, the number of tourists visiting Türkiye stood at 15.6 million.

Russians constituted the largest group of foreign tourists, showed the data the ministry released on June 23.

In the first five months of 2023, nearly 1.8 million Russians vacationed in Türkiye, up from 854,000 in the same period of last year.

Some 1.6 million German holidaymakers visited the country, accounting for 11.3 percent of all foreign tourists, followed by Bulgarians at 1.06 million or 7.5 percent. In January-May last year, 1.3 million Germans vacationed in Türkiye. Bulgarians mostly travel to Türkiye’s border provinces for shopping purposes.

Tourist arrivals from the U.K. increased from 810,000 people in the first five months of last year to more than 1 million this year. Iranians claimed the fifth spot in the foreign visitors’ list at 794,000.

The number of Ukrainian tourists declined nearly 43 percent year-on-year in the January-May period to around 251,000, data also showed.

Istanbul was the favorite destination of foreign travelers. In the first five months of 2023, the mega city welcomed a total of 6.3 million foreigners. Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast, received 3.14 million foreign holidaymakers. In the same period, the northwestern province of Edirne hosted 1.5 million visitors.

In May alone, foreign tourist arrivals increased by 16 percent on an annual basis to 4.5 million. The year-on-year pace of growth in foreign tourist visits, however, slowed from 29 percent in April, according to the data.

Meanwhile, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said despite the February earthquakes and the elections held in May, the targets of welcoming 60 million visitors and generating $56 billion in tourism revenues set for 2023 will not be changed.

He added that Türkiye aims to attract 90 million tourists and earn $100 billion from tourism in 2028, recalling that tourist arrivals reached 51.4 million and tourism revenues amounted to $46.3 billion in 2022.

On the other hand, the nine-day Eid al-Adha holiday will give a boost to domestic tourism activity. Some 2 million people are expected to go on a holiday during Eid, according to people from the tourism industry.

In the popular tourist destination Antalya alone, around 585,000 reservations were made for the Eid holiday, they said.

In Istanbul, tens of thousands of people already rushed to the intercity bus station. In the face of the strong demand, coach companies put more buses on the service.