A festival will be held as part of the Marmaris Bicycle Routes Project, which was initiated by the Mediterranean town of Marmaris, a tourism gem with its natural beauties, to claim a share of Turkey's bicycle tourism sub-sector.

To introduce the Marmaris Bicycle Festival, organized by the Marmaris Municipality, a press conference was held at the Culture and Art House and attended by Bicycle Routes Project Coordinator İsmet Kamil Öner and Marmaris Bicycle Association President Tolga Gök.

The festival is scheduled to run from April 28 to May 2, and it will be financed by a generous donation from the South Aegean Development Agency (GEKA), according to Öner.

Noting that the Bicycle Routes Project was approved by GEKA about two years ago, Öner said a total of 800 kilometers of bike routes have been established as part of the project. "More than 300 information boards along with 800 signboards have been placed on these routes. The routes are shared online with bicycle lovers all around the world in four different languages," he added.

Highlighting that the festival will be held at the same time as the Marmaris leg of the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey, Öner stressed the festival will be enlivened with the tour. "We expect many domestic and international cyclists to attend the festival," he said, adding Marmaris is very suitable for bicycle tourism with its climate and geographical features.

Marmaris is a district in the southwestern province of Muğla, which is one of the hottest tourism spots in Turkey after Istanbul and Antalya. At 1.4 million, tourists from the U.K. accounted for the highest share of foreign tourists visiting the province last year. Last year the city hosted 3.3 million domestic and international tourists in total, with Marmaris accounting for nearly half of the total share of tourists last year.