Travel, tourism sectors generate 12 pct of Turkey’s GDP: Report

“Based on its direct, indirect, and induced GDP impact, travel and tourism generated 12 percent of Turkey’s GDP in 2014, higher than the global average of 9.8 percent. This is nearly twice the size of banking’s GDP impact at 6.4 percent,” according to the Turkey country report, which was published on May 28 along with 25 other leading tourism countries’ reports and a global assessment report for 2014. 

The 2015 Benchmarking Report of the WTTC compared the travel and tourism sectors to eight other sectors, which are considered to have similar breadth and global presence, across 26 countries, including automotive manufacturing, chemicals, banking, mining, financial services, retail and agriculture. 

Travel and tourism sectors’ direct industry GDP expanded 256 percent in Turkey between 1990 and 2014, while the total economy expanded 110 percent, according to the report, undertaken by Oxford Economics and sponsored by American Express.

Turkish tourism representatives expect to increase this year’s annual income over $35 billion by hosting more than 42 million tourists, despite Europe’s economic problems and conflicts in neighboring countries.

The number of tourists who visited Turkey reached an all-time high of 37 million in 2014, pushing Turkey closer to Italy on the most visited destination chart.

The two sectors’ GDP is expected to grow at an annual average of 5.6 percent over the next decade, while the total economy is expected to expand 3.8 percent per annum in real, inflation-adjusted terms, according to the report. 

The global assessment report showed that the travel and tourism sector, contributing $7.6 trillion to the global GDP in 2014, was the fourth largest sector after mining, financial services and retail respectively. 

According to the Turkey report, travel and tourism sustained a total of 2.1 million direct, indirect, and induced jobs in Turkey in 2014. These sectors thus directly employ more people than the mining, chemical manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, financial services, and banking sectors.

The report showed that travel and tourism comes third out of the eight researched sectors, after retail and agriculture. The industry supported 277 million jobs in 2014, or 9.4 percent of global employment.

“This research demonstrates the huge importance of travel and tourism sectors in creating jobs around the world. It shows that this industry provides more jobs than automotive manufacturing, mining and financial services combined. It confirms that our sector is one of the biggest contributors to global GDP, and significantly is forecast to outpace the global economy every year over the next decade,” said David Scowsill, president and CEO of the WTTC.