Türkiye’s tourism revenue jumped by more than a third in the first quarter of this year, official data showed Friday, as the vital industry maintains last year’s strong trend despite February’s devastating earthquakes in the country’s southeast.

Tourism revenue is critical to Türkiye as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government focus on reducing the current account deficit to tackle high inflation and interest rates.

Last year’s complete rebound from the pandemic fallout saw the number of foreign tourists near the record, generating all-time high revenues and prompting the government to raise its annual tourism estimates.

The tourism income rose 32.3% year-over-year to $8.69 billion in the January-March period, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported on Friday.

In 2022, revenues climbed 53.4% from a year earlier to a record high of nearly $46.3 billion, as lingering pandemic effects dissipated and the Ukraine war fallout drove a surge of Russian arrivals, partly due to flight restrictions imposed by Western nations on Russia.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians are also estimated to have moved last year to Türkiye, a haven for investment in homes and other assets.

Surging demand from European countries also backed arrivals, spearheaded by Germany and the United Kingdom.

Last year’s income blew past the previous high of $38.4 billion in 2019 before the pandemic hit. The figure stood at $30.2 billion in 2021 after the outbreak more than halved it to just $14.8 billion in 2020.

The foreign exchange it brings in makes the tourism sector vital to Türkiye’s economy. The government’s new economic program focuses on flipping the current account deficits to a surplus, prioritizing exports, production and investments while curbing rising prices inflation.

More than one-fifth, or 20.8%, of tourism income in the first quarter of this year was generated by visits of Turkish nationals residing abroad, the TurkStat data showed.

Türkiye welcomed 8.2 million visitors in January-March, a surge of 26.8% year-over-year, the institute said. Some 20.4%, or 1.7 million, were Turkish citizens living in other countries.

Foreign visitors surged 80.33% year-over-year to 44.6 million in 2022, just shy of the peak of 45.1 million in 2019. The figure is compared to the 24.71 million arrivals in 2021 and 12.73 million in 2020.

The government has said foreign arrivals are expected to reach 60 million in 2023 before hitting 90 million in 2028. For the income, it sees it rising to $56 billion this year and $100 billion five years from now.

The goal was reaffirmed by Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Nadir Alpaslan, who on Wednesday said income was set to more than double this year.

Türkiye is taking quick, bold steps to become one of the world’s top tourism destinations, Alpaslan said. He noted that after the pandemic dampened travel worldwide, Türkiye’s Tourism Promotion and Development Agency helped the country’s sector in recovering rapidly.

The average spending per night of each visitor amounted to $84 in the January-March period, with visitors’ average total expenditure at $1,062 per capita.

The data showed that sports, education, and culture spending soared by 116.5%, while package tour expenditures ballooned by 83.4% and tour services expenditures by 82.1%.

In the first quarter, the number of Turkish citizens who visited other countries more than doubled from last year, nearing 2.1 million. Their expenditures reached $1.4 billion in the three months.

The industry hopes to regain momentum this summer after the earthquakes on Feb. 6 dragged down hotel bookings. Dubbed the worst disaster in the country’s modern history, the tremors jolted the southeastern region, killing over 50,000 people, flattening towns and cities and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Tourism contributes about 10% to Türkiye’s gross domestic product (GDP). Around 1.7 million people worked in accommodation and food services in 2022 – about 5% of total employment.