Cruise ship

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.

Galataport in the metropolitan city of Istanbul is the "port of the year" as per the Seatrade Cruise Awards, the cruise industry's premier award organization.

As sanctions imposed on Moscow amid the war in Ukraine hits its aviation sector, Russia is now preparing to launch cruise ship tours to Türkiye this month.

The Astoria Grande cruise ship will hold tours from the Russian city of Sochi in the Black Sea to Istanbul starting mid-July.

The famous holiday resort town of Kuşadası in the western province of Aydın hosted five cruise ships with 6,700 passengers on board in a single day.

Liners Celestyal Olympia, Star Flyer, MSC Lirica, Viking SKY and Seven Seas Explorer docked at the Ege Port on July 5.

Passengers of the cruise ships visited 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.

A state-of-the-art port in Istanbul with an underground terminal, a celebrity chef's restaurant and a shopping centre, welcomes yet another 5,000-passenger cruise ship, bringing more cash to Turkey's tourism industry.

The western province of Çanakkale is expected to welcome 45 more cruise ships until the end of the season this year.

As cruise trips to the province were halted because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no liners arrived at the port in Çanakkale for two years.

More than 500 cruise ships are expected to visit the famous holiday destination Kuşadası in the western province of Aydın, bringing at least 650,000 travelers, the district's mayor has said.

The resort town, which is located on the Aegean coast, welcomes more than 1.2 million foreign and domestic tourists each year.

"In the first quarter of 2022, the receipts in the tourist product increased by 342% compared to the corresponding period last year", noted the Minister of Tourism Vassilis Kikilias in an interview given to ANT1 television station.

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.