Turkey's tourism industry could lose up to five billion euros because of the reduction in the number of tourists against the background of the terrorist threat, the president of the Aegean Touristic Enterprises and Accommodation Union, Mehmet Isler, told Deutsche Welle.
Turkey is the sixth most attractive tourist destination, in 2014 it had 42 million visitors. The country's annual revenues from tourism are as high as 30 billion dollars. But the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) indicated a drop of 13.8% in the first six months of this year in comparison with the same period in 2014.
After the terrorist attack in Suruci on July 20, nine countries (including Russia) officially warned their citizens against travelling to the eastern regions of Turkey.
Another problem is the increasing number of refugees in holiday resorts, such as Bodrum and Izmir. "Hundreds of thousands of people are trying to flee to Europe," Isler said, adding that there are about 130,000 Syrian refugees in Izmir at the moment. "It saddens us to witness such a tragedy. However, this is very bad for tourism during the high season," Interfax cited him as saying.
According to him, rising Islamophobia across the Europe has also affected Turkish tourism.
