Minister of Tourism: We are immune to crises

The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, evaluated the tourism data for the first 9 months of the year, the expectations, the goals achieved and the new goals at the 2022 Tourism Evaluation Meeting.

Ersoy said that despite the epidemic and global crises, Turkey lost less than its competitors in number of tourists and income. He said that immunity is achieved through market diversity and market diversity is achieved through promotion.

Stating that he compared current tourism data to the pre-pandemic period, Ersoy said: “When we compare 7-month data from 2019 and 2022, Spain is 18 percent behind in the number of tourists. Italy is 29% behind. Greece is 12 percent behind. Turkey is 7 percent behind at the 7-month level. In other words, we have more than made up for the losses of 2019. But whatever you say at the end of the year; At the end of the year, our expectation is to complete with less than 3. That is, we will almost reach the 2019 data in terms of number of tourists”, he said.

‘WHEN EVERYONE WAITS FOR US TO DRAW THE OBJECTIVES…’

Emphasizing that Turkey’s figures are much better despite negative developments in the euro/dollar parity in terms of tourism receipts, Ersoy said: “Spain is 6 percent behind, Italy 13 percent, Greece a 4 percent, while we are 12 percent further behind.” compared to 2019 in 7-month data. At the end of the year, this rate of increase will increase even more and we will close the year at 18 percent.”

“Our goal at the beginning of the year was 42 million tourists and 35 billion dollars in revenue. However, at the end of February, morale was a bit low with the conflict environment in the Black Sea,” Ersoy said.

Stating that they did the first review on July 28 and revised their target upward as 47 million tourists, $37 billion, Ersoy said, “We’re revising our year-end target again, we’re revising our year-end target year like 50 million tourists 44 billion dollars again”, he made statements.

CHANGE IN THE CALCULATION OF TURKSTAT

Noting that the developments show how realistic the year-end goal is, Ersoy provided the following information:

“It was a very successful October. We are entering the last week. I get nightly reports from all airports, all gates. We will probably close at par or slightly above the 2019 numbers.

You know, 2019 was the year we received a record number of tourists. Despite the pandemic and conflict environment in the Black Sea, here we can clearly see how well the process is managed and that the data is very close to the year we broke the record.”

Mentioning the revision carried out by the Statistical Institute of Turkey (TUIK) in the tourism statistics, Ersoy spoke about the changes made in the fields of education and health tourism, along with expenses for marina services, consumer durables expenses and package travel expenses, in addition to revenue from the baggage trade. (AA)