Tourism event in Istanbul attracts global companies

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

A visitor checks a stall from Turkey’s Konya province at EMITT in Istanbul.

The East Mediterranean International Travel & Tourism Exhibition (EMITT), ranked as the fifth largest tourism exhibition in the world, brought together more than 4,500 participants and 114,000 visitors from all over the world, exceeding last year’s record, according to a top executive of the organizing company.

“We reached a greater number of visitors and participants at this year’s fair,” said Hacer Aydın, general manager of Ekin Fuar, the fair organizer, speaking to Daily News on the phone yesterday.

She said the results for this year’s exhibition, which took place from Feb. 8 to 12, had yet to be officially announced, but she expected the event to have grown by 15 percent since 2010. Furthermore, the exhibition welcomed Argentina, Hungary, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Slovenia and Venezuela for the first time this year.

“The increasing number of countries participating in EMITT each year demonstrates the avid interest in Turkish tourism,” she said.

Nearly 150 Turkish towns and cities and regional development agencies participated to promote the country’s historic heritage.

Stalls from Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Hungary, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Palestine, Russian Federation, Singapore, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Yemen attracted attention.