Turkey was the No. 1 choice for Ukrainian tourists in 2020 due to its healthy holiday opportunities during coronavirus, new data revealed Friday.

According to a report by the Mediterranean Touristic Hoteliers Association (AKTOB), 750,000 Ukrainians traveled as tourists to other countries last year with 560,000 of them preferring Turkey.

Almost all of these tourists chose Turkey’s Mediterranean resort city of Antalya thanks to the introduction of the “Safe Tourism Certification Program” in mid-2020. The scheme – coordinated by the Culture and Tourism Ministry along with several other related ministries, including the Health Ministry – set out a series of measures for various sectors such as hotels and transportation designed to protect the health status of vacationers and the employees at the facilities.

With the measures, the city continued to be one of the most preferred holiday destinations in the region in last year, as the number of tourists visiting totaled about 3.5 million.

AKTOB President Erkan Yağcı said that Ukrainians started to visit Antalya in July and their numbers significantly increased in August, September and October. Yağcı added that Ukrainians have also begun bookings for 2021.

The United Nations called 2020 "the worst year in tourism history" as the COVID-19 pandemic cost the global industry $1.3 trillion in lost revenue. That decline amounted to "more than 11 times the loss recorded during the 2009 global economic crisis," the Madrid-based World Tourism Organization (WTO) also said, warning that between 100 million and 120 million direct tourism jobs were at risk.

COVID-19 also hit Turkey’s tourism sector. According to statistics, yearly revenue totaled $12 billion last year with a 65% decrease compared to 2019. Also, from October to December, quarterly tourism revenue fell 50.4% due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions and pandemic concerns.