Space new destination for Turkish tourism firm

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey’s VIP Tourism offers tourists from all over the world a four-hour space experinece on a special vehicle. Hürriyet photo

VIP Tourism, a Turkish tourism firm, will start organizing space tours to the stratosphere by 2014, the company announced yesterday.
The company will offer space tourists from Turkey and around the world a four-hour-long experience 36 kilometers above the Earth’s surface aboard a space balloon named “Bloon,” which has reportedly been developed with state-of-the-art technology by Spanish firm zero2infinity. The company has invested 20 million euros in the Bloon project.
“Reservations will begin Jan. 1, and we expect 400 people to register before the launch of the service,” VIP Tourism Chief Executive Officer Ceylan Pirinçcioğlu told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.
The first take-off is slated to occur by the end of 2014 in Turkey – the first country in which the project is being implemented. The Central Anatolian provinces of Eskişehir and Konya are the two strongest possibilities for the location of the Bloon facility, Pirinçcioğlu said.
Four people will be able to travel at a time on Bloon, he said, adding that the ascent would take two-and-a-half hours and that tourists would enjoy a meal in space before preparing to land.
The cost of the trip will be 110,000 euros, he said.