Turkey tourism bucks global trend in 2009

Turkey’s tourism industry increased by 2.81% last year, a new report by the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry has revealed.

Whilst 2009 saw the economic downturn force global tourism to contract by 4.3%, Turkey welcomed more than 27 million foreign visitors according to the report.

Analysis of the figures proved Turkey to be most popular with German tourists with almost 4.5 million Germans visiting the country in 2009. Russian tourists accounted for 2.6 million of total visitor numbers, followed by Britain with 2.4 million visitors.

Nearly 4.5 million German tourists visited Turkey in 2009 and Russia was the second country to send biggest number of tourists to Turkey with 2.6 million which was followed by Britain with 2.4 million visitors.

Commenting on Turkey’s tourism Ahmet Barut, chairman of the Turkish Hoteliers’ Federation said tourism in Turkey achieved revenue of 21 billion dollars in 2009 and was confident of the sectors continued success:

“The Turkish tourism sector will keep growing,” Barut said, “our goal is to attract 28 million tourists to Turkey in 2010 and obtain an income of 22 billion U.S. dollars.”

Source: The Journal of Turkish Weekly