President Tayyip Erdogan announced that at a time when Europe was in the process of opening up, it was decided to close it completely until May 17 in order to rapidly decrease the number of cases in Turkey to below 5,000.
Russia, Turkey’s largest tourism market, imposed restrictions on flights with Turkey between April 15 and June 1 due to the increase in COVID-19 cases. In addition to Russia, countries including Britain and Germany, one of Turkey’s important tourism markets, also announced a travel warning to Turkey due to the high number of cases.
Answering the question of Reuters regarding Turkey’s target in tourism this year after the latest developments, Ersoy stated that Turkey has taken much stricter measures to combat the corona virus and said, “We see that the decrease in the number of cases has accelerated this week. If our prediction is correct, as of May 17, the number of cases will decrease to less than 5 thousand ”and added:
“Our goal is to reduce the number of cases to less than 5 thousand after May 17 in order to open up the tourist traffic as of June 1. If we can decrease to this number, we still keep our target of 30 million.”
According to the data announced by the Ministry of Health, the number of cases that reached 60 thousand levels in April was 25 thousand 980 yesterday.
With the effect of security concerns and travel restrictions related to the pandemic, the number of foreign visitors coming to Turkey in 2020 was 12.73 million with a decrease of 71.74 percent.
According to the latest data announced by the Ministry of Tourism, the number of foreign visitors decreased by 54 percent in the January-March period this year, reaching 1.95 million.
