Turkey’s tourism bosses will be at World Travel Market London 2015 – the leading global event for the travel industry – to highlight an upsurge in new airline services from the UK.
The country is seeing increased British visitor numbers and expects the positive trend to continue into 2016, thanks to routes being launched by a host of airlines, from airports across the UK.
For the first five months of 2015, more than 592,000 British tourists visited Turkey, up 2.2% year-on-year. A total of 2.6 million Brits visited in 2014.
British Airways has launched Gatwick flights for this summer to Bodrum and Dalaman.
Turkish low-cost airline Pegasus Airlines has a new route from Gatwick to Istanbul, with connections to Antalya, Bodrum, Dalaman and Izmir.
Pegasus also operates direct flights to Izmir and flights to Istanbul from Stansted.
Holidaymakers in the north of the UK are able to take advantage of new services from Jet2.com.
For summer 2015, the carrier is operating new services from Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle to Antalya, and next summer it will launch links from Edinburgh to Antalya and Dalaman.
Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines’ service from Istanbul to Heathrow will be increased from 30 flights to 37 flights per week from October 25, 2015.
Furthermore, the upswell in visitor numbers is thanks, in part, to a favourable exchange rate – the pound has strengthened against the Turkish lira this year, so costs in resort are lower for British tourists.
There is also growing awareness of Turkey’s cultural heritage, health tourism, luxury hotels and top-class golfing facilities, according to Ali Selcuk Can, Attaché for the Turkish Culture and Tourism Office in London.
“We are trying to diversify the tourism products that we have, by promoting city breaks for Istanbul, and cultural tours for Cappadocia and Anatolian region,” Can commented.
“The mainstream business is still the mass market – tourists who are looking for sun, sand and sea holidays, but there is increasing demand for city breaks and culture tours.”
Can said Turkey has 13 UNESCO World Heritage sites, which range from a Mesolithic temple to the World War One battlefield of Gallipoli.
The country’s world-class golfing facilities are mainly around Belek, in the province of Antalya, where courses designed by the likes of Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie can be found.
There are a growing number of five-star hotels in Turkey, especially in the Belek area, and many are promoting their eco-friendly credentials to appeal to holidaymakers concerned about the environment.
The long-term prospects look bright too, as Istanbul’s third airport – set to be the biggest in the world – will open in 2018.
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About World Travel Market London
WTM London, the leading global event for the travel industry, is the must-attend four-day business-to-business exhibition for the worldwide travel and tourism industry.
Almost 51,500 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and international press, embark on ExCeL – London every November to network, negotiate and discover the latest industry opinion and trends at WTM.
WTM London, now in its 36th year, is the event where the travel industry conducts and concludes its deals. WTM 2014 will generate around £2.5 billion of travel industry contracts.
WTM London is part of Reed Travel Exhibition’s World Travel Market events, which also includes Arabian Travel Market, World Travel Market Latin America and World Travel Market Africa. www.wtmworld.com
World Travel Market Events
World Travel Market is comprised of the leading leisure travel events in the world; World Travel Market London, WTM Latin America in Sao Paulo, WTM Africa in Cape Town and Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.
New events for 2016 are WTM connect Asia and WTM connect China, which join WTM connect Ski and International Golf Travel Market. These unique one-to-one events are targeted at leisure and niche travel markets, allowing exhibitors to exclusively meet with elite hosted buyers.
The World Travel Market events are attended by the global travel and tourism industry’s senior executives to conduct business deals and discover the latest research, insight and opinion.
In 2014, the World Travel Market events facilitated around $7 billion in industry deals from negotiations between the more than 15,000 buyers, 9,500 exhibitors (1,500 main stand holders and 8,000 stand sharers) in attendance of its four events.
WTM is owned by the world’s leading events organiser Reed Exhibitions.
About Reed Exhibitions
Reed Exhibitions is the world’s leading events organiser, with over 500 events in 43 countries. In 2014 Reed brought together over seven million event participants from around the world generating billions of dollars in business. Today Reed events are held throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa and organised by 41 fully staffed offices. Reed Exhibitions serves 43 industry sectors with trade and consumer events. It is part of the RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.