Antalya retains popularity among German & Russian
Posted by meb at January 7th, 2009
Germans and Russians were the largest groups of foreign tourists choosing Antalya as a vacation destination in 2008, officials from the Antalya Culture and Tourism Department said on Monday.
Officials said a total of 9.9 million tourists, including Turkish expats, visited Antalya in 2008. Germans topped the list of foreigners who vacationed in Antalya, they added.
Around 2.3 million Germans visited Antalya last year. The number of German tourists visiting the city was up 4.56 percent in 2008 over 2007. According to officials, the number of Russian tourists visiting Antalya in 2008 was up 20.10 percent over 2007, reaching 2.1 million.
Ukrainians ranked third among foreign tourists visiting Antalya. The number of Ukrainians visiting the city was up 39.26 percent over 2007, hitting 462,978 in 2008.
The numbers of Iranian, Spanish, Belarusian, Romanian and Norwegian tourists traveling to Antalya were also up in 2008.
Tourism officials said they also expected the number of German tourists spending vacations in Turkey to increase this year and expressed their belief that the ongoing global economic crisis would be an opportunity for Turkey.
Middle-class Europeans, who used to spend their vacations in the United States, Canada, Spain, Greece or countries in the Far East, will travel Turkey in 2009, looking for economical, high-quality vacation facilities, officials predicted, underlining that the negative effects of the financial crisis would urge people in Europe to decrease their expenditures.
source: Today’s Zaman
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