Turkey’s Major Industries – Tourism
With so many beach resorts, historical spots, and cities to explore, it’s no wonder that tourism is one of Turkey’s largest and most important industries. In 2011, Turkey was the 6th most visited destination for tourism, and whilst it took a little bit of a dip over the following couple of years, mostly down to worldwide terrorism and in-house politics, figures showing a resurgence in tourism are very encouraging.
In 2018, almost 1.5 million foreign visitors headed to Turkey in January alone. When you consider that the summer moths are when the traditional high numbers flock to the hugely popular beach resorts on the south coast, you can expect those figures to rise drastically as the year goes on. Of course, during the winter months, Istanbul is without a doubt the number one tourist attraction in Turkey, and the city remains a hot spot throughout the year.
Almost every nationality visits Turkey, and with its easy location between east and west, as well as plentiful airports serving international hubs, it’s not hard to see why so many people favour it.
Tourism is hugely important to Turkey in terms of revenue, and to give you an idea of how much cash actually comes into the country via tourism, in 2017 alone, $26.3 billion was brought into the economy, with 19% year on year increase. These figures were calculated at the end of January 2018.
Turkey’s Tourism Hotspots
Istanbul will also be a place to attract countless foreign visitors, due to its high history and amazing scenery, but the south coast is the place to be during the summer months. In addition, cities such a Izmir and Bursa attract numbers, with Bursa being the top snow ski resort during the winter months.
Beach holidays see the south coast booming from May to October, with Marmaris, Icmeler, Gumbet, Bodrum, Calis, Kas, Side, Antalya, Alanya, Fethiye, Hisaronu, and Olu Deniz some of the biggest resorts around. There are smaller one if you want to escape the big crowds, but with large international airports flying direct during the summer months to the UK, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, and the rest of Europe, visitors find it easy, and of course cheap, to visit the beaches of Turkey.
Turkey is home to countless ancient ruins, not only near to the tourist resorts, but in its central plains too. The Black Sea coast is gaining popularity, and overall, every single part of Turkey has a tourist attraction of some kind, and usually more than one.
Why Did Tourism Dip?
After 2011 Turkey saw a quick decline in numbers and this was down to global terrorism and political issues within the country. Of course, most countries have a terrorism problem to some degree, but Turkey seemed to get the rough end of the deal with scaremongering, due to its land border with Syria. Of course, the border is almost 24 hours by car away from the main tourist resorts, but many newspapers didn’t highlight that fact. Istanbul also saw a couple of large scale attacks, which understandably put many visitors off.
Thankfully things have calmed down and as visitors gain confidence back, they are starting to return to Turkey. This of course can only be great news for the economy as a whole, but also for those visitors, who were missing out in a big way previously.
In addition to all of this, the Turkish Lira is very favourable against foreign currency at the present time. Of course, this can fluctuate, such is the nature of currency, but it is certainly a plus point for visitors to Turkey at this time. To give you an idea of how great this is at the moment, in May, you could get 6 Turkish Lira for just one British Pound. That’s the best rate in decades.
