Turkey's tourist paradise Antalya hit a new all-time daily high in terms of the number of foreign tourists coming to the town in one day on June 23.
Antalya tourism, which started 2018 with records, broke a new record, as it welcomed around 79,485 tourists on Saturday. While over 1.5 million tourists have come to the city in the first 23 days of June, the number of tourists coming to the city since the beginning of this year has reached around 4.37 million, up over 43 percent year-on-year.
Noting that 79,000 foreign tourists arrived in Antalya on June 23, the city's governor Münir Karaloğlu said: "We previously said the presidential and parliamentary elections wouldn't have a negative effect on tourism, and it really didn't. We saw it during this campaign, it doesn't have any effect today as well. Again, the foreigners continue to come, they don't have anything [to do] with our elections. The citizens of Antalya have made their campaigns by paying attention to the fact that Antalya is really a tourism city.
Moreover, Turkey is set to be the fourth country receiving the most tourists in the world by exceeding 90 million in 2030, according to a study carried out by the Scottish professor Ian Yeoman and published in the book "Tomorrow's Tourist - Scenarios & Trends," part of the series of Advances in Tourism.
The study, which noted that Turkey will be a star in tourism, said China will lead the way with 167.4 million tourists, followed by the U.S. with 116.7 million and France with 102.4 million. Welcoming over 90 million tourists, Turkey will leave behind today's hot tourist spots such as Spain, and will rank fourth in the world. The works to spread tourism throughout the year, steps taken to diversify tourism and the interest of the world's most populous countries such as China, India and Pakistan will contribute to the increase in the number of tourists coming to Turkey, the study said.
