Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy has revealed Turkey’s Tourism Strategy for 2023 at the conference with domestic and foreign press members held in Istanbul Dolmabahce Palace, on September 27, World Tourism Day.
The Minister also showed the new 2020 Advertising Films to be used for promotion of Turkey abroad, developed in accordance with the approaches of the strategy.
Bringing Turkish tourism to a sustainable and income-driven growth model, Tourism Strategy for 2023 aims to welcome more than 75 million tourists and reach a tourism income of 65 billion dollars in 2023, as a result of the studies to be conducted and multi-directional new practices.
Tourism Strategy for 2023, within the scope of targets determined in 11th Development Plan and benefit from the outputs of 3rd Council of Tourism, summarizes the path to the great change and improvement expected to be made in Turkey’s tourism sector. At the press conference, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy talked about Turkey’s Tourism Strategy for 2023:
“Turkey is a world leader that offers a wide array of travel opportunities and that is able to meet the ever-changing expectations of today’s tourists. By putting new strategies into practice set forth in Tourism Strategy for 2023, we will ensure that Turkey will advance to the upper league in global tourism market with its tourist number and size of income. We are aiming that more than 75 million tourists will visit our country and reach an income of 65 billion dollars in 2023. We are planning to realize that by increasing the average spending of a tourist and raising the number of average nights from 9.9 to 10 and thus reaching the average level of spending of 86 dollars per night.”
Sustainable Approach in Promotional Activities
A central agency model for touristic promotion and development, in practice for long years in the countries that are our competitors across the world, is brought into action in our country as well. It has been ensured that the sector has actively participated in tourism publicity through Tourism Promotion and Development Agency of Turkey and it has paved the way for sustainable and effective promotion by broadening the budget resources. We have increased the Ministry’s promotional budget that was 18 million dollars in 2018 to 72 million dollars in 2019 thanks to the change of policy. We aim to raise the promotional budget to 180 million dollars with our Ministry and newly-established Tourism Promotion and Development Agency of Turkey in 2020.
We intend to meet the deficit with great promotional budgets of our competitors in tourism that are in use for the studies which are the products of a long-time investment through yearly increments. In that line, we will work to reach a promotional budget of 220 million dollars in 2023. We will increase our tourism incomes thanks to the promotions with Tourism Promotion and Development Agency of Turkey and as our income increases, our promotional budget will expand as well.
Diversification of Promotions
In line with these objectives, we will diversify our promotional activities on TV, outdoor, magazine, editorial scripts, digital and social media in a focused and intensive way. We are doing market researches in target markets to reach the expectations of the visitors and we’re taking place in all channels by diversifying our promotional strategy in accordance with the said researches. We put emphasis on bringing experience-based Turkey portal and digital applications into action.
Besides foreign visitors, we will also carry out promotional studies for domestic visitors to improve domestic tourism. We will focus on new product and destination studies, especially in newly-discovered or developing touristic regions.
Furthermore, in this sense, we target to increase the package tour rates to 15 – 60 percent by ensuring the security of supply.
We’re also expecting an increase in the number of visitors with high spending potential. We will develop new products in this aspect. We will approach gastronomic promotion under a separate title. We will add new ones among our cities registered by UNESCO. We will draw a ‘Taste Map of Turkey’ and create gastronomy routes. We will take actions to improve health tourism and increase the shopping expenses of the tourists. We will focus on many fields ranging from educational tourism to sports, faith tourism, third age target group, congress tourism, festivals, and events and to cruise-yacht tourism. We will continue to open new museums across Turkey. We will increase the number of our items in UNESCO’s World Heritage Lists. We will create routes for land and road cycling bicycle tourism with new culture destinations. We will increase the number of “Bicycle-Friendly Hotels” as well. By keeping digitalization at the center of all our studies, we will provide the experience that the new-generation tourists are looking for before even their trip starts. For faith tourism, we will put ‘Digital Faith Map and Faith Portal of Turkey’ into practice.”
