Nearly 8 million tourists visit Antalya in 2017 despite sharp decline in arrivals from Europe

ANTALYA - Doğan News Agency

Some 7.5 million tourists visited the Mediterranean resort of Antalya in the first eight months of the year despite a steady decrease in arrivals from 10 key European markets, data showed on Sept. 6. 

Just 6.4 million tourists visited Antalya over the whole of 2016, which was a tough year for the resort’s tourism amid a diplomatic crisis with Russia. 

In August, nearly 1.8 million tourists visited Antalya, with a 75 percent year-on-year increase. 

With normalization in bilateral ties between Turkey and Russia, the number of arrivals from Russia to Antalya has seen a sharp rise, as more than 2.6 million Russians visited the resort in the January-August period. This was a 2.536 percent year-on-year increase. Russia therefore again became the top market for Antalya’s tourism by taking a 33 percent share in total. 

Germany was the second largest market for Antalya’s tourism sector, though the number of arrivals from Germany continued to decline. In the first eight months of the year, more than 1 million Germans visited Antalya with the loss of 236,000 German tourists compared to the same period of 2016. Germany took a 15.5 percent share in total foreign arrivals into Antalya in the mentioned period. 

Ukraine was the third top market for Antalya. Some 545,278 Ukrainians visited Antalya in the first eight months of the year with a 26 percent year-on-year increase. The share of Ukrainians in the total was 7.8 percent. 

The United Kingdom was the fourth top market for Antalya, with 251,714 Brits visiting the resort. 

The number of arrivals in the province from many key European markets continued to decline, including the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, Austria and Switzerland, data showed.