Turkey's Tourism Revenue Up 11 Percent To $12.9 Billion

Turkey's revenue from tourism jumped to $12.9 billion in the third quarter of 2014, government sources said on Thursday.



"Tourism in Turkey continues to break records despite there being so much instability surrounding the country," Tourism Minister Omer Celik said.



Revenue improved 11 percent from the same period in the previous year, according to data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute.



Turkey welcomed more than 17.1 million foreign visitors in the third quarter of this year, an increase from 16.1 million in the same quarter in 2013.  Nearly 35 million tourists visited Turkey last year, a 10 percent rise over 2012.



The country's full-year total revenue from tourism was $32 billion in 2013. 



The third quarter has traditionally been the peak season for tourism as the summer months attract the largest number of tourists who visit to the country's world-famous resorts and historic monuments. 



Income from tourism is a valuable source of foreign currency for the country, which has run a large current account deficit and faced high oil and gas import prices during the last four years. 



TurkStat also said that nearly 2.5 million of the visitors to the country in the quarter were Turkish citizens resident abroad.



"While 81.8 percent of this income was obtained from foreign visitors, 18.2 percent was obtained from citizens resident abroad," TurkStat said.



But tourism spending decreased in the third quarter, by 3.8 percent to $1.17 billion. This was a drop from $1.22 billion year-on-year.



The average amount spent by foreign tourists was $721 this year in the third quarter, when resort prices are high due to summer demand. Turks living abroad spent $1,001 on average.



According to TurkStat, the number of Turkish citizens traveling abroad in the quarter increased by 49.9 percent over the last year and reached 2.067 million. Their average expenditure was $592 per capita for the quarter.



Over 30 million tourists came to Turkey between January and September 2014 compared with 28.3 million over the same period last year, according to the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry. 



There was an overall six percent rise in the tourist numbers for the first nine months of 2014.



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