Turkey: Domestic tourism expenditure up 18.9%

ANKARA (AA): Turkey’s domestic tourism expenditure surged 18.9 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2018, the country’s statistical authority reported on Wednesday. From July to September last year, residents spent some 21.1 billion Turkish liras on domestic trips, including individual and package tour expenditures.

“In this quarter, while 88.7 percent of domestic tourism expenditure was individual with 18.7 billion Turkish liras, 11.3 percent of it was package tour expenditures with 2.4 billion Turkish liras,” TurkStat said.

Official figures revealed that domestic visitors made around 333 million overnights, while the average number of overnights was 10.2 and average expenditure per trip was some $116.

TurkStat said nearly 25 million residents had domestic trips over the same period.

Domestic trips mostly for visiting relatives

In the three-month period, the primary purpose of domestic trips was visiting relatives, accounting for a 58.9-percent share of total trips.

“The secondary purpose of trip was ‘travel, leisure, holiday’ with 36.4 percent and the third was ‘health’ with 2.2 percent,” TurkStat said.

The other major travel purposes were meeting/conference/courses/seminars and commercial relations plus attending fairs.

“In this quarter, according to number of overnights by type of accommodation, domestic visitors stayed mostly at ‘house of friend and relative’ with 221.2 million overnights.

“While ‘own house’ took second place with 63.2 million overnights, ‘hotel’ took third place with 25.8 million overnights,” the institute said.

Over the same period, residents spent most for travel/leisure/holiday and health tourism with average per trip expenditures of $165 and $148, respectively.

The top three items under individual tour expenditures were eating and drinking, transportation, and accommodation in the July-September period last year.

According to TurkStat, the number of residents in Turkey was 82 million as of December 31, 2018.

The statistical authority will release its next report on the subject on May. 7.