Turkey expects to receive 30 million tourists in 2011 Jan 20, 2010

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Ertuğrul Günay, the Turkish minister of culture and tourism, shared his optimistic vision for the future of tourism in Turkey. If a new crisis doesn't happen in the following couple of years, then by 2011 Turkish resorts will be able to host over 30 million tourists, declared the minister. As Ertuğrul Günay noted, the crisis has had a serious negative impact on the bottom line of large tourist destination not only in Turkey but in many other countries as well including USA, China, Italy, Spain, and France. On the whole, Turkey suffered less than other countries on the background of the economical crisis.

According to the ministry data, 2009 the touristic inflow to Turkey was unchanged from the 2008 levels, and ran a total of 27 million people. In 2010 Turkey expects to increase this number by an extra million, and in 2011 by another two million getting to a total of 30 million tourists. In addition, Ertuğrul Günay noted that in the future Turkey will position itself actively not only on the market of summer beach resorts, but on the cultural and historic tourism market as well. The latter is especially interesting in the Eastern parts of the country and the Black Sea coastal regions. According to the statistical data of Rostourism, during the 9 month of 2009 Turkey was visited by over 1.7 million tourists from Russia – which happens to be a 13% decrease from the same period in 2008.