Boosting tourism: Turkey eyes Chennai, other metro cities

Chennai: Turkish Tourism, which has been participating in few important trade exhibitions since the last couple of years, has planned to rev up its tourism campaign in India targeting mainly the wedding and MICE segments. Turkey will come to woo Chennai and other important metros starting this month.
Turkey is home to the iconic Hagia Sophia, with its soaring dome and Christian mosaics, the massive 17th century Blue Mosque and the circa-1460 Topkap? Palace, former home of sultans are other attractions. Turkish Tourism hopes to have its share of the tourism pie as Indians from Chennai and other cities have been evincing interest in exploring new overseas destinations abroad, while also showing a tendency to loosen their purse strings while holidaying abroad.
Around 15 big Indian weddings have been confirmed in 2018. “Our focus is to showcase Turkey beyond Istanbul. The messaging would be to look beyond Istanbul,” Mr. H. Deniz Ersoz, Culture & Tourism Counsellor, Embassy of Republic of Turkey in India, said.
About 90 percent of the hotels on the Mediterranean coast work on all-inclusive packages. This is yet not known in the Indian market. Therefore, efforts would be to make this messaging spread across all trade hubs in India.
This month will see Turkish Tourism commence joint promotional campaigns with leading tour companies in the country, to tap the weddings market, corporates and MICE. The campaign will cover Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and few tier-II cities.
Foreign tourist arrivals in the first six months of 2018 increased by 30 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, reaching around 16 million, as per official statistics. Tourism revenue in the first six months of this year rose from US$ 8.7 billion to US$ 11.4 billion.
India inbound to Turkey grew 100 percent between January and June this year, compared to the corresponding period last year. Turkey has targeted two lakh Indian visitors this year. The maximum number of Indian visitors to Turkey was in 2015 and it stood at 1.32 lakhs. Mr. Ersoz had meetings with Union Tourism Ministry officials in India, on reviving the mechanism to explore scope of mutual cooperation in tourism. Turkey is also exploring a JWG meeting in Istanbul in October- November this year.


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Turkey sees 25 percent rise in foreign visitors in first seven months of year: Tourism ministry

The number of foreigners visiting Turkey in the first seven months of 2018 increased by nearly 25 percent, compared to the same period last year, data from the Culture and Tourism Ministry showed on Aug. 29. 

More than 21.6 million foreign visitors arrived in Turkey from January to July, compared to 17.3 million in the first seven months of 2017, according to the ministry data.

Russians accounted for over 15 percent or 3.3 million visitors of total visitors in the first seven months of the year, followed by Germans with around 11 percent, or 2.3 million, and Iranians with 6 percent, or 1.3 million visitors. 

Iran was followed by Georgia and the United Kingdom. 

Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city by population and one of its top tourist draws, and the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya recorded the greatest number of foreign arrivals, 7.5 million and 6.7 million respectively. 

The month of July saw arrival of 5.7 million foreigners by an 11.7 percent year-on-year rise.

The number of foreign arrivals into Turkey regressed to 25.4 million in 2016 due to an escalation in security concerns and a diplomatic crisis with Russia. Last year, Turkey’s tourism sector witnessed a strong rebound as bilateral ties with Russia normalized and security worries eased, with 32.4 million foreigners visiting Turkey. 

A report from the Hotels Association of Turkey (TÜROB) showed that hotels enjoyed significant increases in occupancy rates in the first seven months of the year, driven by the rise in foreign arrivals. 

Hotel occupancy rates across Turkey rose 15.7 percent year-on-year to 64.8 percent and average daily revenue (ADR) rose to 69 euros by a 25.2 percent yearly increase in the mentioned period, according to STR Global data, which was announced by TÜROB on Aug. 29. 

Thus, Turkey reached the highest increase in terms of both hotel occupancy rates and ADR among all European destinations in the January-July period, TÜROB said. 

Hotel occupancy rates saw a 7.1 percent yearly increase and hit 74.9 percent in July, with ADR increasing to 87.8 euros by a nearly 12 percent yearly increase, STR Global data also showed. 

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