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Turkey Recovers After Earthquake: Tourist Demand Surpasses Beginning-of-Year Volumes

tourism in turkey

Turkey suffered a severe blow on February 6th when a series of earthquakes greatly impacted the country. In particular, the tourism sector, which had seen significant growth in recent years, experienced major repercussions. However, despite the difficulties, Turkey is proving to have great adaptability and resilience.

During the pandemic, Turkey played a leading role in the map of open tourist destinations. Thanks to a different policy than that of Europe, Turkish beaches became the favorites for many tourists from Northern Europe and Northern Asia. However, the earthquake was a heavy blow to Turkish tourism, with significant repercussions on the economy.

TOURISM IN TURKEY: THE NUMBERS

Despite this, statistical data tells a new story of recovery for the country. About three months after the event, tourist demand for Turkey seems to have returned in full force. Analyzing data on international flight searches, which show tourists’ travel intentions, it is clear that the country experienced a collapse in demand following the event. Within two days, flight searches for Turkey plummeted by 42%. However, just a few days later, we see that demand began to grow again.

From February 11th to 20th, searches for Turkey grew at an average daily rate of +2.3%. By April, demand volume returned to pre-earthquake levels around April 12th, recovering the entire gap in just 65 days. It is incredible how quickly demand has rebounded and how confident tourists are.

Tourism demand composition and growth for Turkey before and after the 2023 earthquake

NATIONALITIES TRAVELING TO TURKEY: GERMANS IN THE FRONT ROW

Germans, a reference market for incoming Turkish tourism, have not disappointed: even after the event, they remain in first place with a 22.7% share of the total. Following are the British (14.7%), the domestic market (11.0%), the Dutch (4.9%), and the Italians (4.0%). Not all markets, however, have fully recovered their performance. Among the top five, only tourist demand from the Netherlands is growing at a rate higher than that of the pre-earthquake period.

In conclusion, the recovery of Turkish tourist demand after the earthquake is a sign of hope for the country and the tourism sector. Despite the difficulties, Turkey is proving to have great adaptability and resilience, and it can rely on an international tourism audience still very interested in discovering the beauty of this country. We hope this positive trend continues and that the country continues to enjoy its well-deserved tourist success.

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Lybra Destination powered by Zucchetti Travel Data Lake

The Travel Data Lake of the Zucchetti Group collects and manages millions of accommodation searches every day. Thanks to these, it is possible to have a statistically significant overview of future tourist demand and extract valuable information on the profile of travelers. The system anonymously collects the stay searches made by travelers through the CRS of the Zucchetti group, providing an accurate forecast of hotel demand (period, destination, length of stay, etc.). Zucchetti is the largest Italian software house: with over 40 years of experience, in 2021 it has more than 700,000 customers, revenues of over 1.3 billion euros, and a group of over 8,000 people. Thanks to its Hospitality division, which supplies digital tools to over 50% of the accommodation facilities in Italy, in 2020 Zucchetti developed the Travel Data Lake, the largest predictive hub in Italy, with the aim of centralizing the forecast data from the group’s Booking Engine.

The data is processed by Destination, the market intelligence platform of Lybra Tech, a company of the Zucchetti Group specialized in tourism technologies and data analysis. Lybra Destination is a multi-source dashboard that helps Decision Makers leverage the potential of future data: it is the only tool capable of managing all the data in the territory by simultaneously analyzing multiple sources. By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning, Lybra Destination helps tourist destinations guide the decision-making process and monitor the impact of their promotional activities.

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