“No weddings on Tuesdays”
Adem Sönmez, President of the Istanbul Chamber of Wedding and Meeting Hall Management (ISTDO), announced that as an industry, they decided to make wedding halls a public holiday on Tuesdays.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Adem Sönmez said that the wedding industry is one of the sectors hardest hit by the Kovid-19 outbreak and it returned to routine operations with normalization.
Expressing that the wedding industry had a good period this year, Sönmez gave the following information:
“In 2019, around 120,000 ceremonies were held in Istanbul. In 2020, this number dropped to 50,000 with the pandemic. In 2021, 130,000 weddings were held, with an increase of 38 percent in 2022, around 180,000. The number of weddings held in Istanbul continued, surpassing pre-pandemic figures. Our reservations for 2023 are going very well. We expect between 200,000 and 220,000 weddings in Istanbul this year. We also recover the pre-pandemic reserve culture.”
“LET IT BE AN EXAMPLE FOR ALL TURKEY”
Sönmez stated that they started working to make Tuesday a holiday in the wedding sector and that they chose Istanbul as a pilot region in this context, continuing as follows:
“As a result of the meetings and consultations we had with our friends in the industry, we made the decision that the wedding halls are holidays on Tuesdays. In our consultations with the representatives of the professional chambers of women’s hairdressers and beauticians, they also stated that it would be more appropriate to have a Tuesday, and they could also follow this decision.
As the Chamber of Craftsmen, we have reported this to the Istanbul Governorate, the Istanbul Union of Chambers of Merchants and Craftsmen and the Ministry of Commerce. Last week we had a meeting with the deputy governor of Istanbul and it was positive. Our merchants hope that the Governor of Istanbul will approve this good news. We hope that the work will start as a pilot project in Istanbul to set an example for the whole of Turkey.”
“WE EXPECT IMPROVEMENT OF VAT”
Expressing that they also demanded the reduction of VAT in the food sector for the wedding sector, Sönmez said: “Our request from our president is to set our VAT rates as good news for couples who are getting married in 2023. As an industry of weddings, we are ready to fix our prices in the first half of 2023 with the reduction of VAT rates”. he said.
Pointing out the importance of keeping the wedding industry alive, Sönmez said:
“Along with the wedding industry, economic conditions inevitably change on their own. The wedding party not only has a wedding hall, but also touches 242 products in the market together with the wedding hall. Here, the sector itself touches the market, from the real estate sector to the jeweler, from the white line to furniture, from textiles to painters. That is why we expect an improvement from our government regarding VAT”.