Antalya

More than 7 million foreign tourists have arrived in Antalya by air between Jan. 1 and July 18, marking a 24 percent increase from the same period of last year.

Applications for the National Feature, National Short Feature and National Documentary Film Competitions and the Literary Adaptation Screenplay Competition of the 60th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival started on July 17.

The festival will be held by Antalya Metropolitan Municipality between Oct. 7 and 14 this year in the southern province of Antalya.

With scores of tourists hitting the beaches in the tourism hotspot of Antalya to cool off the summer heat, many locals and authorities have raised concerns over people hanging their belongings on wooden fences raised to protect Caretta caretta eggs in the Konyaaltı district.

In order to minimize disturbance by tourist boats during the summer, the entrances to two underwater caves where seals reside in the Kaş and Demre districts of the southern province of Antalya have been blocked off with iron chains.

Instanbulites who left the city to vacation at coastal towns during the nine-day-long Eid al-Adha holiday are now heading back as the holiday ends, creating traffic congestion on some highways.

Within the scope of digital transformation, the Konyaaltı Municipality has added a new one to the projects it has implemented so far: Artificial intelligence system to find defects, potholes and broken pavement on the roads.

Around 100,000 foreign tourists are arriving by air in Antalya each day, according to Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, while the number of international holidaymakers visiting the Mediterranean resort reached 5 million.

"We have made a good start to the tourism season. Hopefully more tourists will visit the city in the coming months" he said.

With the lifting of the music ban in the southern province of Antalya, entertainment venues remained open until the morning for the first time after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, as people from the sector have high hopes of returning to the good old days.

With a whopping 585 thousand reservations made and a predicted holiday activity of 2 million people expected, the southern province of Antalya expects a historic spike in tourism during the nine-day Eid al-Adha holiday.

Visitors diving at the area a sunken French warship, "Paris 2," located off the southern province of Antalya are causing damage by taking pieces from the ship as souvenirs.