Rest in Turkey is a “scarce commodity”, so prices will not fall: the demand of tourists is huge, but rests on transportation restrictions – such statistics were announced by experts from the ATOR travel market. At the moment, the number of flights to Antalya from Russia has exceeded 450 per week, but in the past, about 160 flights arrived in Antalya in just a day, which is 2.5 times more than the current volumes.
From the Turkish side, they say that the total number of flights from Russia has doubled compared to May, Recep Yavuz, head of the working group on tourism of the Antalya City Council, said that the number of flights from Russia to Turkey's main resort has more than doubled. compared to May. In May, about 25 flights a day arrived at the resort from Russia (about 175 per week), and in the first week of June, on average, more than 60 flights arrived per day; the record was set on June 4 – 110 flights. The total number of flights in the first week of June was 452, with over 100,000 Russians arriving.
As experts recalled, last year, when Turkey was opened after a covid ban on June 22, 44 planes from Russia immediately landed in Antalya, on which 12,200 tourists arrived. The number of flights per day reached 160 and more. In July, 700 thousand of our tourists arrived at the resort, that is, 175 thousand tourists arrived every week. This is 43% more than now. About 500,000 tourists are forecast for June this year, about a third less than in the first full month of the season in 2021 and 42% less than in pre-Covid 2019.
But on this, the tourist flow is close to its limit, experts of the association say, given that Turkish carriers have agreed on 450 flights per week as a maximum. In total, in June 2022, programs of six tour operators with charters or block transportation were launched to the resorts of Turkey, direct flights of 8 Russian and Turkish airlines from 17 cities of Russia fly to the country. Basically, these are “pseudo-charters” of Turkish Airlines, which are divided between tour operators. At the same time, in 2019, the main suppliers of tourists to Turkey were 7 tour operators and 18 Russian and foreign airlines operated “clean” charter flights from 46 Russian cities. As a result, the geography of flights to Turkey this summer has decreased by 2.7 times, and the volume of transportation – by more than half.
At the same time, the demand for Turkey is huge – the players of the tourist market add against the backdrop of the closed other beach countries, Turkey this summer has remained generally the only mass foreign destination. “The observed drop in the flow of tourists to Turkey and Antalya in particular is solely a consequence of the shortage of aircraft and the narrowing of the geography of departures due to the“ air sanctions ”of Western countries. And not an imaginary “reduction in demand” at all. There is no reduction,” ATOR says. As a result, holidays in Turkey are becoming a classic “hard-to-find product,” ATOR said. And no “high prices” in such a situation of “classic shortage” practically no longer affect the sales of tours to Turkey: they buy at any price. Intourist, for example, said that almost all of its blocks of seats on Turkish Airlines were sold out before July 21. The picture is similar for many other tour operators. And no one expects a fall in prices for tour packages if the situation with transportation does not fundamentally change.
In general, the forecasts for the numbers are as follows. In the spring, the decline in the flow of tourists to Turkey amounted to almost 71% – up to 378 thousand tourists. If the traffic for June-October does not grow much and fly at a maximum of about 500 flights a week, they will transport about 2.5 million tourists to Antalya during this period. Accordingly, in 2022, about 2.9-3 million Russians can rest in Antalya. This means a decline of 45% by 2019 and 17% by 2021, when Turkey, we recall, was closed due to covid from April to June. The solution to the deficit problem obviously relates to political issues.
We add that the editors of TURPROM recommend choosing a tour to Turkey from any major Russian tour operator at guaranteed best prices in one of the well-known online aggregators of package tours: ✈ here is a direct link to Level.Travel and here is ✈ direct link to Travelata. These online agencies aggregate absolutely all tours of all Russian tour operators, which allows tourists to conveniently compare them and choose the best tour packages. The selected tour can be booked immediately, receive instant confirmation and pay online through a secure banking gateway and receive documents. Or you can just look at and compare the current prices for tours from all tour operators at once.
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