Majority of hotels in Turkey almost ready for normalization prior to opening of season

The covid-19 pandemic has certainly created serious problems in the economy and tourism in Turkey, as in the whole world. Experts comment that tourism has been one of the most affected sectors during this period. Thankfully great effort was spent with the leadership and successful perspective of the Ministry of Health and the issue is now considered to be under control. Tourism professionals held frequent meetings with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and worked in accordance with the instructions given. During this period, the great majority of the facilities in tourism regions were closed.

In Alanya for instance only three of the 550 facilities in the district are open. During this time, professionals in the sector in Alanya determined the measures that should be taken in hotels with a commission including tourism stakeholders and started to work. Thankfully they have reached the stage of completing concerned work in the sense of getting “healthy tourism certificates” to be issued by the official authority.

Experts forecast that the process of normalization will be started as of June based on announcements made by President Erdogan a couple of days ago. It was declared that many activities and services would be free.

Thus the professionals in Alanya also accelerated their efforts in terms of opening facilities on the coast. However, it is also essential that the countries sending tourists to Turkey work out their issues as well so that the area can start to receive incoming groups from said destinations. As it looks right now, source markets have not started functioning efficiently yet and the main activity will start in the middle of June or at the beginning of July. Germany has announced 31 countries, for instance, including 5 countries outside the borders of the EU. On the other hand, it is reported that both the public and the tour operators in Germany demand that Turkey is included among the countries to be allowed for German citizens.

The slowdown of the pandemic process will attract attention of World Tourism sector to destinations such as Antalya and Alanya as these places have managed to do a good job during the crisis on top of the fact that Turkey is indispensable in this regard. Figures recorded after the 2016 crisis should be considered as indicative of that. Turkey receives guests from various countries around the world. This year will not be like earlier years, but provided problems in source markets such as Russia and Germany are worked out by mid-July for instance, Turkey will be likely to experience a busy season of 2-3 months which is very important in getting the country’s economy back on track and in preparation for 2021.