Visitors to Antalya reach over 8 million for first time ever

Antalya, the resort city of Turkey has recorded an all-time high in the first seven months of this year, exceeding eight million foreign visitors for the first time ever. It appears that this trend is to continue and see the overall visitor numbers increase and end the year on a high.

In the first seven months, official data shows that foreign visitors arriving in Antalya stood at 8.19 million, which equated to an increase of 16.6% on the previous year. This is the first time ever that foreign visitor numbers have topped the predicted threshold of eight million.

Airports in Antalya

Antalya Airport has broken five previous records this year. There were three daily records smashed in June, including the arrival of over two million tourists in June for the first time ever. It was also the first time that the first six months of the year saw more than five million foreign visitors. The city also broke records in July; as for the first time ever, foreign tourist numbers stood at over eight million in the first seven months of the year.

Where did the visitors come from?

Visitors were welcomed to Turkey from 193 different countries. Looking at the data collated for the January to July period it shows that Russians topped the table of visitors providing and increase in numbers by 12.4%. This meant that almost 2.98 million Russians arrived in Turkey, making up nearly 38% of total number of foreign tourists visiting Turkey.

German visitors increased by 18.7% when compared to the same period last year. The 1.33 million German tourists gave Germany an overall tourist figure share of just under 17%. In comparison to the previous year there was a massive increase of 209,045 German tourists choosing to holiday in Turkey.

Third in the county visitors list is Ukraine with Ukrainian tourist numbers up to 459,822, which is a rise of 5%. Ukraine made up 5.8% of the total number of foreign visitors coming to Turkey. Overall the increase in Ukrainian tourists was up by 22,629 on the same period of last year.

British visitors to Turkey increase by 21% with 407,379 tourists arriving in Turkey whilst Polish tourist numbers stood at 299,801, which was another rise of 21%. Dutch visitors totalled 248,993 equating to a rise of 13%.

Visitors from Romania were up by a massive 30%, recording an increase of 137,638 visitor numbers coming to Turkey. Czech visitors stood at 121,554 a huge increase of 44% and visitors from Sweden reached 120,449 a 34% rise.

The peak season in Antalya

In June, the city of Antalya welcomed 865,000 foreign visitors from Russia. June is considered to be the first month of the peak season in Turkey with regards to tourism. This meant that Russian visitors were up by 4% and made up almost half of the 2.1 million visitors to the resort city in June. In July Russian tourists contributed a total of 34.5% of visitors to Antalya with 863,934 people arriving in the city, this was an increase of 11.7% when compared to the same period last year.