Türkiye hosts over 23 million foreign tourists

ISTANBUL

More than 23 million foreign tourists visited Türkiye in January-July, marking a robust 128 percent increase from a year ago, data from Culture and Tourism Ministry has shown.

Germans topped the list of foreign visitors, according to the ministry. From January to July, 2.99 million German holidaymakers came to Türkiye, accounting for nearly 13 percent of all foreign tourist arrivals. In the same period of last year, around 1.3 million Germans vacationed in the country.

Russians claimed the second spot in the list at 2.2 million, up from 1.55 million Russian visitors a year ago. The number of British tourists skyrocketed from only 85,000 people in January-July 2021 to 1.81 million in the same period of this year.

Some 1.4 million Bulgarians and 1.3 million Iranians also visited Türkiey in January-July, data from the ministry showed.

The number of Ukrainian tourists visiting the country declined nearly 67 percent to 374,000 people.

Around 3.2 million Turks residing abroad also vacationed in the country in the first seven months of the year, according to the ministry. “Including expats, the number of total visitors has exceeded 26 million people,” it said.

In July alone, foreign tourist arrivals increased by 52.8 percent from a year ago to reach 6.7 million people.

Germans, Russians and Britons were the top visitors, followed by the Dutch. Last month, Türkiye hosted 266,000 Dutch tourists, up from 186,000 in July 2021.

However, the pace of annual growth in foreign tourists appeared to have lost some momentum. In June, 5 million foreign tourists visited Türkiye, marking a 145 percent increase, whereas tourist arrivals rose by 314 percent year-on-year to 3.9 million in May and grew by 226 percent annually in April to 2.6 million.

Istanbul was the most popular city among foreign tourists, according to the data. Between January and July, 8.5 million foreigners visited the city. In July alone, Istanbul welcomed 1.76 million visitors.

Antalya, a favorite place especially among Russians on the Mediterranean coast, ranked second. In the first seven months of 2022, nearly 6.4 million foreign tourists arrived in the resort city.

The northeastern province of Edirne welcomed 2.5 million tourists. Over the past year, Edirne has been attracting shoppers from neighboring Bulgaria and Greece, which explains the province’s high standing on the list.

Muğla, another major holiday destination, hosted 1.48 million foreign holidaymakers in the first seven months of the year.

Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy recently said that targets for 2022 were revised upwards from a previous 42 million tourists and $35 billion in revenue to 47 million tourists and a total revenue of $37 billion.