Turkey which has taken some important steps to improve its tourism revenues also pays much attention to cruise tourism.
The government, acting in this context, is building modern ports, especially in Istanbul where large passenger ships can dock. The authority targets to start harvesting the positive outcome of this investment by 2020. Nevertheless, it is essential that Turkey completes construction of said facilities for the global sector to re-route passenger ships to Turkey so as to provide contribution to Turkey’s cruise sector revenues.
Experts say one of the most important issues is to convince the cruise companies to re-route their ships to the ports of Turkey. A travel route to include Turkey’s ports is considered to have great advantage over those without Turkish ports.
On the other hand, Istanbul is considered to be an important destination for world cruise tourism industry which has an annual turnover of US $ 35 billion and 28 million passengers traveling.
The good news is cruise operators have started adding Istanbul to their routes again. Experts say that with the completion of GALATA PORT and with the YENIKAPI port put into operation the city will become an important destination the for global cruise tourism again.
Nevertheless experts also emphasize for the growth of the cruise industry in Turkey, the need to develop the infrastructure and completion of construction of new ports is essential.
As is known, Turkey experienced some unfavorable period in tourism sector because of some problems regarding foreign issues in recent years but later began to make up for it and managed to reach its normal capacity thanks to the steps taken by the administration.
Tourism sector revenues provides a great support for the deficit balance which is one of the major issues Turkey’s administration has been trying to cope with.
