Turkey- Antalya sees record lows in Russian tourists with 81 pct decrease

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) The number ofRussiantourists visiting Turkey’s top holiday resort town ofAntalyadecreased by 81 percent as their numbers plummeted to 2427 in January from 12870 of January 2015 while the total number of tourists visiting the city in January decreased 17 percent according to official figures. Numbers also showed that only a total of 97601 tourists visitedAntalyain January the lowest for January in the last decade. Antalya hosted some 135010 tourists in January 2006 and 125446 in January 2007. It saw its highest turnout in January 2008 with 140306. In January 2009 and January 2010Antalyareceived 106539 and 140019 visitors respectively. After 2010 the number of tourists visiting the city reached a stable level with 126272 tourists in January 2011 122314 in January 2012 111485 in January 2013 and 116974 in January 2014. Last January Antalya’s total visitors stood at 117746. Antalya gathers millions of local and international tourists each year with its luxury hotels usually overbooked especially in the summer seasons. Meanwhile in winter tourism slows down due to dropping temperatures. TheRussianmarket experienced the largest decrease in the number of tourists visiting the city in January 2016 asRussiaranked 5th in 2016 compared to 2nd in 2015 in terms of countries with the highest number of visitors to Antalya. Turkey was Russia’s number one foreign tourism destination for years but this came to an abrupt end following the shooting down of aRussianmilitary plane by Turkish jets on the Syria-Turkey border on Nov. 24 2015. Upon the incidentRussiaimposed economic sanctions against Turkey and travel restrictions onRussiantourists visiting Turkey. Turkey’s tourism industry also expects to see losses in other markets this year after an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide bomb attack in Istanbul’s top tourist spot Sultanahmet which killed 11Germantourists on Jan. 12 highlighted security concerns for tourists planning to visit Turkey. The loss in theGermanmarket stood at 16 percent as the number of Germans visitingAntalyadecreased to 44262 in January 2016 from 52731 in January 2015. While Germans took the top spot for tourists in Antalya the Dutch followed second. However the Dutch market has also decreased by 20 percent compared to 2015 as this year’s January number fell to 4544 from 5688. The number of Israeli visitors saw a 122 percent increase bringing it to third. In January 2016 the number of Israeli tourists visiting the city reached to 4475 a huge leap from 2008 visitors in January 2015. Britain came fourth with a 14 percent decrease asAntalyaonly hosted some 2965 English tourists in January. British tourists mostly likeAntalyafor its luxury golf club resorts in the Belek region of the province. According to the statistics of Antalya’s provincial directorate of culture and tourism among the 38 countries that send tourists to Antalya only nine surpassed their January 2015 numbers. However the surplus in the number of tourists arriving from these nine (which included Israel Ukraine FranceCzechRepublic Hungary Slovakia Estonia Serbia and Syria) covered only 30 percent of the loss caused by the decrease in theRussianmarket.