Turkey’s tourist sector is pinning its hopes on Britain removing it from a Covid-19 travel red list later in the week to assist it get over the pandemic, a spate of wildfires, and Germany’s designation of Turkey as high risk.
While Turkish tourism has seen a robust rebound from last year, with foreign visitor arrivals for July jumping fourfold to 4.36 million, it remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
Many hotels within the southern Aegean region, which rely heavily on British tourists, may accessible the top of August if Britain doesn’t remove Turkey from its red list, tourism officials say.
Turkey’s economy is heavily reliant on foreign currency revenues from Russian, German and British tourists. While the Russian market has performed well, Germany’s classification of Turkey as a high-risk country this month has hurt the world .
Kaan Kavaloglu, head of the Limak Tourism Group, which operates four hotels within the southern resort of Antalya, said sales of Turkey packages to German tourists had slowed.
We don’t see cancellations for the prevailing bookings, but new bookings have bogged down . We hope this decision will change within the short term,” Kavaloglu said.
Ulkay Atmaca, head of Turkey’s Professional Hotel Managers Association, said with the autumn in German bookings and therefore the Scandinavian market remaining closed, the world was looking to Britain, which sent quite 2.5 million visitors in 2019.
“We are eyeing British market to open in the week ,” Atmaca said. “We expect an enormous demand from British market because it opens.”
Hotels in Marmaris, a top tourist destination which was hit by wildfires this month, met Turkish banks on Friday to debate loan restructuring, said Bulent Bulbuloglu, chairman of the South Aegean Hoteliers Union. He said many hotels might not be ready to repay loans until 2023.
Data from Turkey’s BDDK banking watchdog showed total loans in Turkey’s hotel industry at 116 billion lira ($13.7 billion) and therefore the industry’s non-performing loans at 4.2 billion lira by the top of June.
Bulbuoglu said the world was expecting British market to open “as a final chance”, adding that otherwise 70% of hotels in Marmaris would accessible the top of August.