5-star Turkish tourism in the ascendant
Posted by meb at March 23rd, 2008
Turkish luxury tourism is on the rise, a great opportunity for the country’s tourism industry, known for its long struggle with low revenues.
Today’s Zaman spoke with Enrique Acrich Eckert, the Turkey regional manager for Barceló Hotels & Resorts, a Spanish luxury hotel chain based in Palma de Mallorca with a history spanning three-quarters of a century. With its balanced mix, offering a high-quality standard to both tourists and business, the company’s strategy is an excellent example of what is needed to push Turkey to the top of the world’s hotel industry league.
With 160 hotels in 15 countries, Barceló is one of the world’s leading luxury hotel chains. Operating in Turkey for nearly three years now, the company has always counted on a mixed portfolio, including both urban and beach locations. Today, with the Barceló Eresin Topkapı and Barceló Beyazıt Saray hotels in İstanbul, and the Barceló Tat Beach and Golf Resort in Turkey’s Mediterranean region of Belek, the chain has three sites in Turkey.
“Barceló is attractive for vacationers as well as for business clients,” Eckert explains. Indeed, although leisure travelers are more frequent at Barceló’s Belek site, around 40 percent of the chain’s İstanbul clients are leisure guests, the same proportion are corporate or individual business clients. The rest are individual travelers booking on short notice and often online. “This is a strong combination,” he says, stressing that this balance makes the hotels less dependent on single client groups.
Based in Spain, Barceló operates more than 120 hotels worldwide.
Luxury tourism has huge potential
Asked why Barceló decided to enter Turkey, Eckert explains that, despite the company’s worldwide engagement, the chain’s focus of activity has always been Europe, the Mediterranean region in particular.
“Turkey was particularly interesting for further investments when we first entered the market in 2005,” he says and elaborates: “We were convinced of huge but fairly undeveloped potential in the Turkish luxury tourism sector. This potential, combined with our know-how, we were very sure could be successful in Turkey.”
Another reason to enter Turkey, he says, was the long-term plan to use this location as a kind of strategic base for further development in the Eastern European and Mediterranean regions. “Both are currently rapidly growing hotspots,” he says.
In recent years Barceló has opened several new locations in regions as diverse as the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Morocco and Tunisia. These tourist destinations are often regarded as some of the most significant threats to the Turkish tourism industry because of their increasing popularity with Eastern European tourists. Asked whether the Turkish tourism industry should fear this competition, Eckert waves the issue aside, saying, “Turkey can win with its cultural uniqueness, its location relatively close to the main source markets of Germany and Spain and the great hospitality of the Turkish people.”
Turkey has to count on quality
“I would describe the recent developments [in the Turkish tourism industry] as very promising,” Eckert says, adding that the quality of tourism is “definitely rising in Turkey!” This rise in the luxury hotel sector quality in particular will also boost the Turkish tourism sector in general, he adds. “Since we came here in 2005 we have experienced strong and continuous growth, with customer numbers increasing by an annual average of 20 percent.”
There is still high but unexplored potential for growth in Turkey’s tourism sector, Eckert says. “We still need more and better facilities for the meeting, incentive, congress and exhibition sector (MICE)”, he says. The growth of convention facilities must run parallel to the expansion of high-quality accommodation facilities, he underlines.
An issue yet to be tackled in this regard is traffic. “Transportation is a pressing issue in İstanbul”, Eckert says and explains that though İstanbul can host and accommodate large conferences, the city still lags behind in providing appropriate and efficient means of transportation. “Organizers have to decide on a single venue as the center for conventions, congresses and large meetings, whether it be somewhere around Maslak, Atatürk Airport, Taksim or Sultanahmet. But a surefire reality is that you cannot allow congress halls all around the city, since such a move would cripple the city’s traffic even further,” he noted.
Turkey needs better international promotion, Eckert also finds. “Many people are very surprised when they visit Turkey for the first time, which shows that Turkey is still struggling with an understated image,” he says. To this end, he underlines the importance of Turkish participation in more major international tourism fairs.
Barceló runs all its hotels in Turkey in the form of long-term leasing agreements. “That means that we are controlling all the operations on our own, which was very important for us in carrying out our business independently,” he says.
And while Turkey has a distance to go in regard to the tourism and hotel industry, Barceló has further plans to grow here. “We are continuously expending our activities in Turkey,” Eckert says and hints that other major Turkish cities, including some in Anatolia, are being eyed for the future.
Leading globe with luxury hotels
The Barceló luxury hotel chain is based in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, and was founded 75 years ago. With 160 hotels in 15 countries, Barceló is one of the world’s leading luxury hotel chains. The chain currently operates in three sites in Turkey: the Barceló Eresin Topkapı and the Barceló Beyazıt Saray in İstanbul, and the Barceló Tat Beach and Golf Resort in the Mediterranean Belek region, close to Antalya.
You can book a from our partner site Tourbox Antalya.
Barceló hotels are elegant premium residences, featuring special guest care and offering spacious, light-filled and well-maintained rooms, as well as expansive wellness facilities and delicious Turkish, Spanish and international cuisine.
source: Today’s Zaman
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