Turkey targets to increase number of visiting tourists to 50 million in 2019

Turkey will make a Tourism Master Plan and targets to increase the number of tourists to 50 million and tourism revenues to US$ 35 billion in 2019, based on same plan. On the other hand the authority will use the Tourism Development Fund to be allocated to improve tourism, as well. As announced earlier, Turkey had closed last year with all-time tourism records in the whole history of the Turkish Republic.

A Tourism Master Plan will be prepared within the scope of “New Economy Program (YEP) Structural Transformation Steps – 2019” and a Tourism Development Fund will be established. Thus it is planned to increase both country and destination diversity, number of tourists and income per tourist.

While the number of tourists is expected to climb up to 50 million and tourism revenues to US$ 35 billion this year, Turkey targets to achieve a performance  of 70 million tourists and US$ 70 billion in tourism revenues in the next four years following the steps to be taken by the administration.

Tourism revenues of Turkey went up to US$ 29 billion 512 million 926 thousand with an increase of 12.3 percent as compared to the previous year. 81.8 percent of this income was obtained from foreign visitors and 18.2 percent from Turkish citizens residing abroad. Both the number of tourists and tourism revenues increased. US$ 22 billion 546 million 616 thousand of this revenue came from personal spending and US$ 6 billion 966 million 311 thousand came from spending on package tours.

While the average expenditure per capita was 647 dollars, the average expenditure of foreigners was $ 617 and the average expenditure of the citizens residing abroad was 801 dollars.

The number of overnight visitors departing from Turkey increased by 9.3 percent in the said period, from 103.8 million 113.5 million.

While the interest of foreign tourists to Turkey continued to increase, this positive trend also reflected in tour prices.

Looking at the average prices per week (and longer) domestic tours in March last year, one can see the cost was TL 174 last year whereas this figure has gone up to TL 241 with an increase of 39 percent. On the other hand, the prices of the said tours in the summer months in August 2018 saw the level of TL 540.