Turkish 2015 tourism revenues fall 8.3 pct to $31.46 bln: Data

ANKARA

CİHAN photo

Tourism revenues in Turkey declined 14.3 percent to $6.57 billion in the final quarter of 2015, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) said on Jan. 29. In 2015 as a whole, tourism revenues fell 8.3 percent, reaching $31.46 billion amid the decrease in the number of Russian and European tourists. 

The number of visitors to Turkey fell 1.61 percent in 2015 from the previous year, data from the Tourism Ministry showed on Jan. 28. 

While some 81.3 percent of tourism income (excluding GSM roaming and marina service expenditures) was obtained from foreign visitors, the remaining 18.7 percent was obtained from citizens residing abroad, according to TÜİK data. 

While average expenditure per capita was $756 in 2015, the average expenditure of the foreigners was $ 715 per capita and the average expenditure of the Turkish citizens residing abroad was $970 per capita. 

In 2015, the number of Turkish citizens visited abroad increased by 9.6 percent compared to the previous year and reached 8.7 million. Average expenditure was $651 per capita, according to TÜİK data. 


Foreign arrivals 

A total of 36.2 million foreigners visited the country in 2015, according the Tourism Ministry data. The number of Russian visitors to Turkey decreased to 3.65 million in 2015 from around 4.5 million in 2014, amid Russia’s economic troubles. The decline accelerated after the diplomatic crisis between Russia and Turkey erupted on Nov. 24, 2015, with the number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey decreasing by around 46.9 percent to 25,485 in December 2015 compared to the same month of 2014.  

Overall, foreign arrivals declined by around 7.3 percent to 1.46 million in December 2015 compared to the same month of 2014. 

Despite the drop, the Russian market remained the second largest source of foreign arrivals for Turkey, with over 10 percent of the total. The number one source of arrivals was Germany, which took around 15.5 percent of the total with around 5.6 million visitors, while the U.K. was the third top source of foreign arrivals to Turkey, with a share of around 7 percent of the total. 

The number of arrivals from the Middle East and the Gulf increased sharply in 2015 compared to the previous year, although the figures were still much lower compared to arrivals from Europe. 

The number of arrivals from Saudi Arabia rose by 31 percent to around 450,000 in 2015 compared to 2014.
 
Arrivals from Bahrain also saw an increase of 34 percent to around 32,500 in the same period. 

Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Mahir Ünal said earlier that the sector was unavoidably affected negatively by the Russian crisis as well as regional uncertainties. 

A number of measures will be taken to recover these losses and the planned EXPO meeting in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya will be a great platform, Ünal said at a meeting in Ankara on Jan. 14, as reported by Reuters.