Türkiye’s tourism income soars 53.4 pct to $46.3 bln in 2022

ANKARA

Türkiye’s tourism income jumped to $46.3 billion in 2022, the country’s statistical authority announced yesterday.

The figure surged 53.4 percent from $30.2 billion in 2021, Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said.

While individual expenditures constituted $34.5 billion of the total tourism income, $11.8 billion of tourism income was obtained by package tour expenditures.

Tourists visited Türkiye mostly for “travel, entertainment, sportive and cultural activities” in 2022, with 67.1 percent of the visitors coming for the purpose. Some 4.6 percent of the tourists traveled to the country for business.

In 2022, number of Turkish citizens who visited abroad increased by 165.4 percent compared to previous year and reached to 7.3 million, with an average expenditure of $589 per capita.

Their total expenditure increased by 130.9 percent compared to previous year and reached to $4.3 billion. While $3.78 billion of it was individual expenditures, $523 million was package tour expenditures.

Seperately, Türkiye attracted some 44.6 million foreign tourists in 2022, a rise of 80.3 percent from a year earlier, according to official figures released yesterday by the Culture and Tourism Ministry.

The figure nearly reached the pre-virus level of 45 million in 2019, the ministry data showed.

Istanbul, Türkiye’s most famous city and its largest by population, was the top draw for foreign visitors, welcoming more than 16 million tourists.

It was followed by the resort city of Antalya with 12.8 million visitors, while Edirne, a city in northwestern Türkiye bordering Bulgaria and Greece, welcomed 4.6 million tourists.

At 5.7 million, Germans made up 12.7 percent of all visitors, followed by Russians at 5.2 million, Britons at 3.3 million, Bulgarians at 2.9 million, and Iranians at 2.3 million.

If Turkish citizens living abroad are added to the count, then 2022 figure goes up to 51.4 million, slightly down from 51.9 million in 2019.

In December alone, foreign arrivals in Türkiye were up 26.8 percent year-on-year to 2.4 million.