“In our region, the summer tourist season has begun in hotels hosting German, British and European tourists. And the hotels that mainly accept Russian tourists have not even opened yet. And when they will be open, it is not yet known, ”Hussein Aydogan, president of the Association of Tourism Investors of the Manavgat district of Antalya province, made such a statement, local media quoted.
In his opinion, the reasons for the outflow of Russian tourists were Western sanctions and the fall of the ruble. “After the start of Russia’s special operation to denazify Ukraine, the Russian currency depreciated heavily, first of all, after heavy sanctions from the United States, the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Due to the depreciation of the national currency, it was difficult for Russians to come on vacation to Antalya. For Ukrainians, it is even harder. If things continue like this, then the arrival of Russian vacationers will occur no earlier than June 20 of this year, as in the past year,” the head of the association said.
Russian tourists have been coming on vacation to the Antalya coast – the main resort center of the country – regularly for 30 years. Annually and steadily Antalya received 3.6 million Russian and 600 thousand Ukrainian tourists. As noted by local media, the number of Russians dropped sharply only after the crash of the Russian plane.
As for European travelers, the beach season is already open for them and Turkish hotels are open: 215 four- and five-star hotels in Manavgat host 16 percent of tourists who come to rest in Turkey, and one third of the 16 million tourists coming to Antalya. The 2022 tourist season in Turkish resorts opened with the arrival of citizens of Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Switzerland on vacation. Turkish tourism has special hopes for the first two of them.
Earlier, Turprom wrote that one of the most “European” resort cities in Turkey regretted the collapse of the Russian tourist flow in the 2022 season. Read the details in the article “In Marmaris, a failure with Russian tourists was stated: there will be very few of them.”
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