(MENAFN- Trend News Agency)
Foreign tourist arrivals leaped more than 108 percent in
January-August from the same period of 2021 to 29.3 million, data
from the Culture and Tourism Ministry has shown, Trend reports citing
Hurriyet Daily News .
Some 3.9 million Germans visited Türkiye in the first eight
months, topping the list of foreign tourists, followed by
Russians.
This was above the 1.9 million German holidaymakers the country
attracted a year ago. Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, more than
3 million Russians came to the country, accounting for 10 percent
of all foreign tourist arrivals. Between January-August, 2.5
million Russian vacationed in Türkiye.
Britons ranked third at 2.4 million, while 1.7 million Bulgarian
nationals visited Türkiye in January-August.
Türkiye also hosted more than 1.5 million Iranian tourists in
the first eight months of 2022.
Including Turkish citizens residing abroad, the total number of
visitors reached 32.5 million people, said the ministry.
Istanbul was the most popular destination among foreign
tourists, the data from the ministry showed.
Some 10.2 million foreigners arrived in the city in the first
eight months of the year, corresponding to 35 percent of all
tourists visiting the county.
Antalya, which is a favorite place especially among Russians on
the Mediterranean coast, ranked second, welcoming 8.6 million
foreign tourists.
More than 3 million tourists visited the northwestern province
of Edirne in January-August. Over the past year, Edirne has been
attracting shoppers from neighboring Bulgaria and Greece. The
visitor inflow from Bulgaria gathered pace especially after Türkiye
scrapped the visa requirement for the country's citizens in
July.
The province of Muğla, another major holiday destination, hosted
2.1 million foreign holidaymakers in the first seven months of the
year, while İzmir, the country's third largest city on the Aegean
coast, attracted over 1 million tourists.
In August alone, foreign tourist arrivals in Türkiye increased
by 58.3 percent from a year ago to a total of 6.3 million
people.
But the number of foreign tourists declined by 5.4 percent from
July, when the country hosted 6.7 million international
holidaymakers.
As tourism activity picked up, Türkiye revised upwards its
tourism targets. The country now expects 47 million tourists
bringing $37 billion in revenue this year, up from the previous
estimates of 42 million tourists and $35 billion in revenue from
tourism activities.
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