Tourism expert says the highest number of bookings for 2021 comes from the UK
President of one of the largest hotel groups gave an interview about 2020 tourism season. The professional shared his forecast for new season to come in 2021. He said, “Clearly speaking, we are looking at the full side of the glass. We have an Antalya destination that hosts 2.3 million tourists for 9 months. As a sector that has seen the bottom, we consider the Russian tourist coming right now as a blessing. If we add Ukraine to this, these two countries have provided great potential for us.”
He went on to say, “Russia and Ukraine now account for 60 percent of our operation. On September 19 we saw this year’s record in Antalya with 45 thousand people. 19,500 thousand of these were Russians and 6,500 were from Ukraine.”
The professional noted that the number of European tourists was behind the number of Russian and Ukrainian tourists and added, “We have now built our system on Russia and Ukraine, but this is not a sustainable system. This cannot continue in 2021. European tourists also need to come to Turkey. Because of the climatic conditions and the inability to go to Egypt, the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts are very important for the Russians. So it looks like we will continue to host Russian tourists until the end of November.”
He said that 2020 was the preliminary preparation for 2021, and went on to say following: “We think that 2021 will be much more positive. This year, the season will get longer and the hotels open in Antalya, may see 50-70 percent occupancy rates in October and November.”
The director also said, “Russian tourists are very important for the extension of the season. Here I would like to point out that we receive the highest number of bookings from the UK for 2021. This is the proof that the British will prefer Antalya.”
