How’s Turkish tourism faring?

With a continual bombardment of regularly contradictory news and opinion from newspapers, magazines, websites and social media, it is often difficult to gauge what the true story is.

This is especially the case when it comes to perceptions of risk in the travel sector. Governments and tourist boards regularly complain when their country is deemed unsafe to visit by another country: locals invariably claim that travel advisories full of warnings are an overreaction, while travellers are likely to say the cautionary words weren’t stark enough when a terrorism atrocity or crime spree affects them.

Turkey, bordering political as well as climatic hotspots Syria and Iraq, is one such country, which for months the headlines have regularly suggested is a dangerous and troubled place.

Reports are full of tales of Turkish holiday resorts supposedly  deserted due to the refugee crisis, fears of possible civil war breaking out following the coup attempt a year ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing aggresive grip on the country and fears of terrorism. Warnings of possible attacks from both Islamic and Kurdish groups are cited by travel advisories: for the last two years the so-called Islamic State, with bases in  Syria, has been targeting Turkey, while numerous Kurdish separatist groups, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and TAK, have been waging a war with government forces, especially in the south-east.

The Turkish travel sector is bouncing back

Added to this, in August 2015 Turkey shot down a Russian jet near its border with Syria, bringing ties with Moscow to near-collapse. Russia was at the time the second-biggest source of visitors to the country, and responded to the jet incident by banning travel to Turkey for tourism.

Just one of these factors would normally be enough to decimate a country’s tourism sector, but from a recent visit to the country I can’t help thinking that the Turkish travel sector is bouncing back and in much better form than many people realise.

In June I visited Antalya in Turkey, flying via Istanbul. I feared that I’d board an empty aeroplane and the coastal resorts would be dead. However the four Turkish Airlines aeroplanes I flew to and from Istanbul and then Antalya - including a Boeing 777-300ER, seating up to 400 – were all almost full.

The sizeable resort I stayed in, Xanadu, and the main streets of Antalya were similarly busy. I felt completely safe the whole time.

However, there are many indications that whilst my experiences indicated business as normal, overall, tourism in the country has been suffering greatly. Bodrum’s mayor, Mehmet Kocadon, for example, notes that in 2014 600,000 British tourists alone came to Bodrum, while in 2016 the figure was just 100,000. The year to June 2016 saw a cataclysmic 40% drop in total visitor numbers compared to the year before. Tour operators including TUI, Mark Warner and Thomas Cook have either pulled out of the country or  decreased capacity.

70 per cent cheaper than they were in 2015

One reason I may have seen busy flights and bustling resorts is the fightback the Turkish tourism industry is making. Many hotels have been offering significant discounts on rooms, with nightly rates at some properties now as much as 70 per cent cheaper than they were in 2015.

The government has been offering loans to hotels and expanding fuel subsidies for airlines, in a bid to make Turkey a more financially attractive proposition for carriers.

Such initiatives appear to be working, because in April this year tourist arrivals to Turkey rose 18 percent compared to a year before, to just over 2 million. However, excluding the 2016 figures, visitor numbers in April 2017 were still the lowest for that month since 2010.

Should visitors stay away? The majority of terrorist attacks have been in cities, Ankara and Istanbul, while the Turkish coastal resorts have seen no problems, unlike places like London, Berlin and Paris, where many of the fearful tourists live. Reassuringly, plain-clothes police mingle with the tourists in Turkey now, and many hotels and attractions have added security measures, such as airport-style scanners at entrances.

Some tourists choose to stay away because they don’t want to support a country whose governmental policies they disapprove of - and indeed Erdogan is pursuing policies such as imprisoning the likes of journalists, teachers and lawyers without trial. However, there are many countries tourists visit that have  governmental policies that many people would greatly disapprove of.

However, those working in the tourism industry in such  countries, such as waiters, taxi drivers and hoteliers, often greatly need support from tourists.

And a tourism recovery is vital for Turkey, which relies on  foreign exchange revenue to plug part of a current-account gap predicted to reach 4.7% of gross domestic product this year, according to Bloomberg estimates.

It’s true to say that whilst visitor numbers have been picking up the last year, there’s a long way to go before Turkey is out of the woods.