Aziz Güngör

The ancient city of Ephesus in the western province of İzmir, which sees an influx of tourists every year, welcomed approximately 2.2 million people in 2023, according to the data of the Ephesus Archaeological Museum.

Norwegian-flagged Viking Sky, the first cruise ship of 2023 in Türkiye, has docked in the Aegean province of Aydın's Kuşadası district.

While some of the tourists disembarked from the ship docking at Ege Port, some took part in tours and visited historical sites such as the Ancient City of Ephesus and the House of the Virgin Mary.

Some 1,052 cruise ships are expected to visit Türkiye's ports this year, bringing around 1.5 million visitors as seaborne tourism activity that suffered from the pandemic starts to pick up.

In the first two days of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, six cruise ships brought more than 4,700 visitors to the Kuşadası district of the western province of Aydın on the Aegean coast.

Another 3,000 travelers also arrived in the famous resort town on the last day of the Eid holiday.

A Malta-flagged cruise ship which has carried 375 tourists from the Greek island of Rhodes to the popular Turkish resort town of Kuşadası, one of the important centers of Turkish tourism, has docked.

Some 375 tourists, mostly U.S. citizens, who came disembarked the cruise, entered the country, after undergoing thermal camera control, a precaution against the coronavirus.

Kuşadası, one of Turkey's main holiday destinations on the Aegean coast, will host 310 cruise ships to visit the town with some 360,000 people on board this year, Aziz Güngör, the general manager of Ege Port Limanı, has told Anadolu Agency.

Last year 194 cruise ships docked at the resort's ports, bringing in around 180,000 visitors, according to Güngör.