Record number of tourists visit Antalya last year

ANTALYA

A record 15.7 million tourists arrived in Antalya by air last year, with Russians constituting the largest group of foreign holidaymakers.

The previous record in tourist arrivals was in 2019 at 15.3 million, while in 2022, 13.5 million foreigners visited Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast.

In December alone, more than 243,000 tourists arrived in the resort city, according to the data from the provincial directorate of culture and tourism.

The number of Russians arriving in Antalya increased by 14.1 percent last year compared with 2022 to 3.46 million.

Germans ranked second on the list at 3.36 million. German tourists rose by 19 percent from 2022, according to the data.

British visitors increased by 14.85 percent to 1.32 million.

Last year, Antalya hosted more than 1 million tourists from Poland, marking a robust 39.6 percent rise compared with 2022.

Dutch, Kazakhs, Romanians, Israelis and Ukrainians were also among the foreign holidaymakers.

Meanwhile, some 1.4 million foreign tourists arrived by sea and air in the popular resort town of Bodrum in the province of Muğla in 2023.

In 11 months, 101 cruise ships visited the port of Bodrum, bringing a total of 102,479 passengers, said Ömer Faruk Dengiz, the president of the Bodrum Hoteliers’ Association.

Most of the tourists were from the U.K. and Russia, but Bodrum also lured holidaymakers from Central European countries, Dengiz said.