Professional Hotel Managers Association

With New Year's Eve around the corner, the occupancy rate in hotels in Türkiye's tourism hotspot of Antalya has already exceeded 80 percent.

The resumption of flights between Turkey and Russia amid strong measures to fight coronavirus set off a flood of tourists, with 80 airplanes full of Russian tourists landing in the resort city of Antalya in just one day, according to local officials.

The East Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Exhibition (EMITT) has opened its doors in Istanbul on the same day the Hotel Association of Turkey (TÜROB) announced that hotel occupancy rate in Turkey was the lowest in Europe in 2016, with only 50.8 percent of the total number of rooms being full. EMITT has triumphed as the world's fifth largest fair in the past 21 years.

Over 3 million Russian tourists are expected to visit Turkey in 2017, with the tourism sector already experiencing some relief after the normalization of ties between the two countries, according to a leading tourism representative. 

Tourism income losses at the Mediterranean resort of Antalya will be more than $5 billion, mainly due to a sharp decline in the number of Russian tourists visiting the city, according to sector representatives. 

The four-day-long Eid al-Fitr holiday cheered the tourism sector in Turkey, after a tough year when the industry was hit by a severe blow due to crisis in Russia.

Chairman of the Professional Hotel Managers Association (POYD) Ali K?z?lda? quoted an occupancy rate of 100 percent at hotels and attributed this recovery to the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.