Domestic tourists' trip expenditures within Türkiye surged nearly 35% on an annual basis in the third quarter of last year, official data showed on Thursday, as travel demand remained strong and over 21.5 million residents had trips between July and September.

Spending of domestic tourists increased by 34.8% compared to the same quarter of the year earlier and reached TL 276.11 billion (around $6.37 billion at the current exchange rate), the data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) showed.

Some 84.5% of domestic tourism expenditure was individual in the quarter, with TL 233.45 billion, while 15.5% of it was package tour expenditures, with TL 42.66 billion, TurkStat said.

Domestic trips with one or more than one overnights increased by 5.5% year-over-year and surpassed 27 million, the data also showed.

In the July-September quarter, domestic visitors made 230.8 million overnight stays, with an average number of overnights of 8.5, the statistics agency said.

The average number of stays rose compared to 5.8 observed in the second quarter of the year.

The third quarter, coinciding with warm summer months, is seen as a busy period with overnight stays historically being high compared to other quarters.

When the distribution of expenditure types in total travel expenditures is analyzed in this quarter, it is seen that the expenditure types, which have the highest shares, were eating and drinking expenditures with 29.4%, accommodation with 23.8% and transportation with 19.3%, respectively.