Holiday bookings to the eastern Mediterranean, including Türkiye, are surging as hotels cut prices and travellers reassess the risks following the U.S.-Iran war, with the rebound in hotel searches observed, according to a report on Sunday.
Bookings in Türkiye, the island of Cyprus and parts of north Africa were impacted following the launch of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February.
But demand has been rebounding steadily even before the recent cease-fire agreement, according to airlines, travel agents and industry data, a report by British daily The Financial Times (FT) indicated.
Travellers have not only become less concerned that the conflict may spread. Many also realised that some destinations that suffered a drop in bookings were hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the hostilities, the report suggests.
Consumers “get their maps out and realise the Suez Canal is not linked to the Strait of Hormuz,” easyJet chief executive Kenton Jarvis told the FT.
“I think it’s been a really good geography lesson.”
Consumer searches for hotels in Egypt, Türkiye and Cyprus have been climbing steadily most weeks since mid-April, roughly six weeks after the conflict began, according to data group Lighthouse.
Moreover, searches for Türkiye and Egypt were both a third higher in the second week of June than the first week, the report said.
Jozsef Varadi, chief executive of Wizz Air, said it was seeing a “very strong recovery of some of the markets... like Türkiye, Egypt, Cyprus that got affected because they were just too close to the events”, with some now “fully recovered.”
European demand has also increased after people who would otherwise have flown through or to the Gulf chose holidays closer to home, even though Gulf carriers have been offering insurance policies to convince consumers to return.
The U.K. also lifted its guidance against people travelling to the region, which had prevented travel agencies from booking trips to or through Gulf airports.
Türkiye has enjoyed a positive momentum in tourism in the first quarter of the year, with revenues also rising to close to $10 billion, according to Culture and Tourism Ministry data.
The country has welcomed some 6.84 million foreign visitors from January to March, up 2.2% compared to the same period a year ago.
The latest data published on Monday showed that the number of foreign visitors to Türkiye fell by 3.58% year-on-year to 4.86 million in May, easing from a 9.44% contraction in April.
The officials have earlier flagged a potential impact of the war in the second quarter but remained optimistic about full-year figures, especially if the conflict stops.
