Culture and Tourism Minister Ersoy: We have updated our tourism income target as 22 billion dollars

Minister Ersoy continued as follows;

“Tourism has been one of the important actors of world economies since the second half of the 20th century. In line with the global sustainable development goals, the importance and value of tourism are meant more, especially for the economies of underdeveloped and developing countries that cannot provide sufficient development in industrialization. When we look at tourism from a macroeconomic perspective, we see that it contributes to the national economy under different topics. Among these, it is possible to count the basic requirements of a strong economy such as increasing employment and decreasing unemployment rates, ensuring the foreign trade balance and the balance of payments with foreign currency inflows. In addition, it is an undeniable fact that tourism creates significant added value in strategically important topics such as domestic and international travel, cultural and economic interaction, and the establishment of international cooperation. In addition, with domestic and international travel, it is an undeniable fact that tourism creates significant added value in strategically important topics such as the establishment of international cooperation through cultural and economic interaction.

'TOURISM IS THE SECTOR SEVERELY AFFECTED BY THE PANDEMIC'

Emphasizing the tourism sector is the most severely affected during the pandemic, Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said, “According to World Bank data, in the pre-Covid-19 period, international tourist arrivals reached the level of 2.3 billion people, and tourism revenues reached almost 1.9 trillion dollars. Economy and tourism are intertwined concepts and tourism has an important share in our country. In 2019, its contribution to foreign trade was 30 percent. In addition, employment contribution to Turkey was at the level of 2.7 million labor force. Undoubtedly, the sector most severely affected by the pandemic process was tourism, and we had to postpone the targets we set earlier. However, with the support and loan programs we prepared, we performed better than the major competitors in tourism. We also supported this with diplomatic traffic. After 16 million visits in 2020, we expect over 28 million visitors at the end of 2021. Comparing the revenue of 12.1 billion dollars in 2020, it reached the level of 16.9 billion dollars in the first 9 months of 2021, and we updated our 2021 targets to 22 billion dollars. Undoubtedly, our world's most effective and comprehensive promotional campaign has a great role in this. Our Go Turkey platform has become the best example in the world. Turkey will be the most important actor of the new era and we will continue to do our part as a ministry.”