Turkish ports welcome 1.2 mln cruise passengers in 8 months

ISTANBUL

A total of 749 cruise ships visited Türkiye’s ports in the January-August period, bringing 1.2 million passengers, according to data from the Transport Ministry.

August was the busiest month in terms of cruise ship traffic at 176, but most passengers arrived in July at more than 315,000.

In the first eight months of 2023, Turkish ports hosted 719 cruise ships with 907,000 travelers on board, up from 597 ships and 553,000 passengers in the same period of the previous year.

The port in the popular holiday destination Kuşadası was the busiest in August 2024. It welcomed 330 ships and 535,000 visitors.

Istanbul ranked second at 123 ships and 268,000 passengers, followed by the port of Bodrum at 62 ships and 83,000 travelers.

Some 56 cruise ships with around 45,000 passengers on board visited the port of Bodrum, according to the number of the ministry.

Last year, Turkish ports welcomed 1,192 cruise ships and 1.54 million cruise passengers, compared with 993 ships and a little more than 1 million passengers in 2022.

Meanwhile, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy voiced confidence once again that Türkiye is on track to meet the targets of welcoming 60 million visitors and generating $60 billion in tourism activity this year.

He noted that only 12 million foreign tourists visited the country and tourism revenues were $13 billion in 2002, but with right policies implemented the country has managed to lure much more international holidaymakers.

The country’s tourism revenues, which are an important source of hard-currency that help to finance the current account deficit, surged 9.3 percent year-on-year in January-July 2024 to $23.66 billion.

In 2023, tourism revenues amounted to $54.3 billion, a 16.9 percent increase from the previous year.

Türkiye has diversified tourism products and extended tourism to 12 months, thus attracting more travelers from other countries, Ersoy said in a speech in the province of Karaman.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry has not yet released the data for foreign tourist arrival data for August.

The latest figures available from the ministry showed that 28.98 million foreign tourists visited the country in the January-July period, an 8.3 percent increase from a year ago.

Including Turks residing abroad, the number of total visitors was 33.5 million.

In July alone, the foreign tourist tally was up 2.6 percent year-on-year to 7.3 million.