Antalya has seen more than 10 million foreign tourists landing at its airport so far this year as Türkiye’s famed Mediterranean resort city enjoys its most buoyant summer since the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The number of foreigners coming to the southern province by air has reached nearly 10.1 million from Jan. 1 through Sept. 15, its Governor Ersin Yazıcı said. The figure marks a 64% year-over-year increase versus 6.15 million who landed in the city a year ago.
“These figures include the number of foreigners arriving by air, not those arriving by land. We estimate that we will reach a figure between 12 million and 13 million by the end of the year,” Yazıcı told Anadolu Agency (AA).
The resort already well topped the 9 million who arrived throughout the whole of 2021. This figure peaked in 2019, dubbed the best tourism season ever, when arrivals reached 16 million, before the slump caused by the pandemic.
Arrivals in the first half of September also jumped 18% year-over-year to more than a million, Yazıcı said.
The big rebound this year has been driven by flocks of tourists from Europe, particularly Germany and the United Kingdom, in addition to arrivals from Russia, whose invasion of Ukraine had sparked fears across the vital industry.
