The number of foreign tourists traveling to Turkey, which plummeted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, seems to be on the way to recovering the figures of yesteryear after soaring visits by more than 3,000% during the past month of May, according to the most recent data published this Friday by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Specific, 936,282 foreign tourists entered Turkey in May, which represents 3,038% more than the 29,829 that did so during the same month of 2020 – shortly after the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic and the first case of coronavirus was detected in Turkey – thanks to the progress of the vaccination campaign and the end of many travel restrictions, both in Turkey and in the countries of origin of tourism.
Despite these good figures, they are still a long way from what 4 million tourists who visited Turkey in May 2019, before the pandemic. However, this is a positive data considering that during the month of May the Eurasian country was under a total isolation 17 days.
By country, Ukrainians they topped the list of foreigners who traveled to Turkey in May, with 236,000 visitors from that country; they were followed by germans (95.000), Bulgarians (57,000), Iranians (44,000) and Iraqis (also about 44,000). If the period between January and May 2021 is taken into account, Russia was the main source of foreign tourists for Turkey despite the two-month suspension of flights imposed by Moscow following the spike in infections in April.
Russia, France and Germany remove restrictions on travel to Turkey
Just this week they began to arrive thousands of russian tourists to Turkey -mainly to destinations in the Mediterranean such as Antalya– After the Russian government lifted the ban on travel to Turkey, where infections have fallen from the 60,000 daily that were reached in April, to about 5,000 positives a day that are currently diagnosed. Between January and May alone, 571,000 Russians traveled to Turkey for tourism, 15.5% of all tourists in that period.
France It has also removed Turkey from the list of countries on which it had imposed restrictions, removing the obligation of a 10 day quarantine for those traveling from Turkey to France; and at the beginning of june Germany did the same, also allowing non-EU citizens -including Turks- to enter the country if they have received both doses of the vaccine against the virus.
Although many businesses in Turkey have suffered during the pandemic, the turkish tourism sector It is the one that has received the hardest blow, going from entering some 29,000 million euros in 2019 in the coffers of the country, to just 10,000 million last year with a drop in visits of 69%. With the good progress of vaccination in Turkey -one of the countries with the largest vaccinated population in the world- the authorities expect to receive about 17 million tourists in 2021, and income close to 17,000 million euros.
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