Domestic tourism expenditure up 18.9 pct in Turkey

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's domestic tourism expenditure surged 18.9 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2018, the country's statistical authority reported on Wednesday.

From July to September last year, residents spent some 21.1 billion Turkish liras ($3.78 billion) on domestic trips, including individual and package tour expenditures.

"In this quarter, while 88.7 percent of domestic tourism expenditure was individual with 18.7 billion Turkish liras, 11.3 percent of it was package tour expenditures with 2.4 billion Turkish liras," TurkStat said.

Official figures revealed that domestic visitors made around 333 million overnights, while the average number of overnights was 10.2 and average expenditure per trip was some $116.

TurkStat said nearly 25 million residents had domestic trips over the same period.