Record number of tourists visited Antalya in first 15 days
ANTALYA
With 125,000 tourists, the southern province of Antalya has broken its record of all time in terms of the number of tourists visiting the city in the first 15 days of the year, while sector representatives also expect the tourist record to be broken in January.
Antalya, one of the cities hosting the most foreign tourists in the world and Türkiye, aims to break the tourism record of all years in 2023.
Accordingly, in the last month of 2022, the Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy and Antalya Governor Ersin Yazıcı set out their target as 17 million tourists.
While the first half of January 2023 was the best period of all years in terms of number of tourists, sector representatives stated that this figure is an important indicator for the achievement of the announced year-end target.
According to the data of the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism Ministry, the number of tourists arriving through two airports in the city, Antalya and Gazipaşa, reached 124,361 between Jan. 1 and Jan. 15.
There was a 58 percent increase compared to the same period of the last year, when nearly 79,000 tourists visited the city.
The number of tourists visiting Antalya in the first 15 days of the new year increased by 17.5 percent compared to the same period of 2020, when the most tourists came with 102,696 people arriving in January.
In 2019, which reached the highest number of tourists of all time on a yearly basis, the number of tourists who came to the city in the same period was about 81,000, which means that there was a 35 percent increase this year.
Antalya reached the highest number of tourists of all years in the first 15-day period of 2023 compared to the same period of previous years.
Recep Yavuz, one of the sector representatives, stated that they expect around 250,000 tourists considering the flight schedules planned to the end of January.
“Antalya has never reached the number of 200,000 tourists in January, while the record is 182,000 tourists in January 2020. This record will be broken this year,” Yavuz stated.
Stating that Antalya also overtook its biggest competitor Majorca, Yavuz said that while visitors from 15 countries came to Majorca in the first 15 days, tourists from 33 countries came to Antalya.
“The people visiting Antalya mostly are from Germany, Russia and the U.K. Currently, Antalya is 40 percent ahead of Majorca. We usually understand how the next three-month winter season will be by looking at the first 15 days of January. These figures pleased us,” Yavuz noted.
