Black Sea towns eye Saudi, Kuwaiti tourists

ISTANBUL

The provinces of Amasya and Samsun on Türkiye’s Black Sea coast aim to attract more holidaymakers from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The Central Black Sea Development Agency (OKA) will host representatives of travel agencies from those two countries early next month to promote Amasya and Samsun as a holiday destination, according to business daily Dünya.

Officials from the OKA will give 20 representatives of the travel agencies from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait a tour of Amasya and Samsun to show the nature and other tourist attractions, such as the districts of Atakum, Ayvacık, Ambarköy, Boraboy and the Şahinkaya canyon in the provinces.

At the end of the two-day program organized for the travel agency representatives, B2B meetings will be held, the OKA said in a statement.

In the first nine months of 2022, more than 281,000 domestic and international tourists visited Amasra, whose history dates back 8,500 years with 14 ancient civilizations.

In 2021, Samsun attracted a total of 474,000 tourists.

According to the latest data from the Culture and Tourism Ministry, nearly 110,000 holidaymakers from Saudi Arabia visited Türkiye in the first four months of 2023, which pointed to a staggering 2,800 percent increase from only 3,800 tourist arrivals from this country in the January-April period of 2022.

The number of Kuwaiti tourists visiting Türkiye in the same period, however, declined by 14 percent year-on-year to around 86,400.