Hotel revenues hit as tourists eschew Antalya

Hotels in the province have lost around 55 million euros in revenue due to the decline in tourist numbers, said the Association of Mediterranean Tourism and Hoteliers of Turkey (AKTOB). 

The decreasing trend in the number of tourists visiting the Mediterranean resort, which includes a roughly 30 percent decline in the number of Russian tourists, are expected for the first five months of the year due to economic problems in Turkey’s northern neighbor, said AKTOB head Yusuf Hacısüleyman. 

The figures for the first four months of the year were even lower than the figures of 2012, when the effects of the global economic crisis were more prominent. While the province hosted around 1.5 million tourists in the first four months of 2011, the figure regressed to around 1.3 million in the same period of 2012. 
Antalya hosted more than 1.4 million tourists in the first four months of 2014. 

Around 210,000 Russian tourists visited Antalya in the first four months of 2014, according to figures from the Culture and Tourism Ministry. The number of Ukrainian tourists also decreased by 16.3 percent in the first four months of 2015 from the same period of 2014. 

There was also a 27 percent decrease in the number of tourists from the Netherlands in the first four months of 2015 year on year. The Netherlands is the third largest origin of tourists visiting Antalya. 

The same trend was seen in the number of Iranian tourists as well. While around 55,000 Iranian tourists visited Antalya in the first four months of 2014, just 44,000 tourists from the country visited the southern hotspot in the same period of this year. 

Despite the double-digit decreases in the number of tourists from Russia, the Netherlands and Iran, the number of tourists visiting Antalya from Germany and Britain increased by 5.7 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, in the first four months of 2015 over the previous year.