Turkey planning “touristic cities”
Turkey’s culture and tourism ministry is planning a series of “touristic cities” to cope with what it hopes will be a massive increase in visitor numbers over the coming years.
The proposals were revealed by Ufak Yilmaz, foreign relations and EU co-ordinator, at last week’s inaugural Travel Turkey exhibition and conference. Mr Yilmaz told delegates that, since 1982, arrivals in Turkey have increased more than 11 times, with revenue increasing 33 times during the period; by 2023 the hope is to further triple the number of arrivals and increase revenues six-fold.
He explained that to do so, the country would need to take advantage of its annual growth rate of 10.2 per cent – one of the fastest in the world over recent years – and to encourage larger-scale projects.
Part of the plan is to develop a series of “touristic cities” featuring golf courses, hospitals and congress centres in addition to accommodation and more traditional attractions.
He added: “There are many ways in which we are planning to develop our tourism offering: winter tourism, cultural tourism and religious tourism are all areas we can develop. We must encourage larger-scale projects and we must develop Istanbul as a destination so that it becomes the international brand name that it deserves to be.”
Report by Tim Gillett, News From Abroad
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