Turkey’s foreign tourist arrivals figure grew by 32% y/y to 1.53mn in February after rising 38.5% y/y in January, data from the culture and tourism ministry showed on March 30.

Consequently, foreign tourist arrivals rose by 35% y/y to 2.99mn in the first two months of 2018.

Foreign tourist arrivals rose by 28% y/y to 32.4mn in the full year of 2017, beating the government's expectation of 31.4mn. The number of Russian tourists increased to 4.72mn from only 0.87mn in 2016 thanks to the resetting of relations between Ankara and Moscow.

Russia imposed a ban on charter flights to Turkey after the downing of a Russian jet near the Syrian border in November 2015 and the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Turkey subsequently shrank by 30% y/y to 25.4mn in 2016.

Also taking a toll on arrivals were security concerns following the attempted coup and a wave of terrorist attacks in 2016 and Turkey's perceived slide under its ongoing state of emergency to authoritarianism, during which the EU has raised grave concerns about a lack of respect for basic human rights.

Turkey’s tourism revenues increased by 19% y/y to $26.2bn in 2017, in parallel with the government’s expectation of $26bn. However, the average expenditure of visitors fell to $681 per capita in 2017 from $705 in 2016.

Turkish hoteliers expect a significant rise in foreign tourist figures in the upcoming 2018 summer season thanks to rising numbers of bookings from Russians and Germans, but they do not expect accommodation prices to return to pre-2015 levels in the coming few years.

Tourism revenues rose by 25% y/y to $1.2bn in January, according to the latest balance of payments data from the central bank.

More than 6.5mn Turkish citizens living abroad visited Turkey last year, bringing in more than $5.9bn which corresponded to some 23.5% of the country’s overall tourism revenues. Turks living abroad spent $903 per capita on average during their stays in Turkey in 2017, $75 higher compared to the previous year.

Turkey very much relies on tourism revenues to finance its weighty current account deficit. The revenues sharply declined to $22.1bn in 2016 from $31.5bn in 2015.

On February 28, Reuters reported German market researcher GfK as saying summer bookings to Turkey by German holidaymakers had doubled, but were still far from the levels seen a few years ago. Bookings for Turkey from Germany for summer 2018 were up 101% at end-January from a year ago, GfK data showed. But it added that the volume of bookings was still only about half of that for Greece, reversing the pattern seen a few years ago.

In 2017, 3.5mn German tourists visited Turkey, down from 3.9mn in 2016. The corresponding figure was 5.5mn in 2015.

The government expects foreign tourist arrivals to rise to 37mn-38mn in 2018, generating revenue of $30bn.

It also predicts more than 6mn Russian and more than 5mn German tourists will visit Turkey in 2018.