Turkey: 2019 domestic tourism spending up 21.5%

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's domestic tourism expenditures surged 21.5% year-on-year in 2019, the country's statistical authority said Wednesday.

Residents spent some 48.9 billion Turkish liras ($8.6 billion) on domestic trips last year, including individual and package tour expenditures, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

"While 91.9% of domestic tourism expenditures were individual with 44.9 billion lira ($7.9 billion), 8.1% were package tour expenditures with nearly 4 billion Turkish liras ($700 million)," TurkStat said.

Official figures showed domestic visitors made around 637 million overnight trips, while the average number of overnights was 8.1 and average expenditures per trip totaled some 625 Turkish liras ($110).

TurkStat said nearly 61.4 million residents made domestic trips over the same period.

The primary purpose of domestic trips was visiting relatives, accounting for a 63.7% share of total trips.

The number two trip purpose was travel, leisure, vacation with 26.5%, and number three was health with 4.6%, TurkStat said.

Domestic visitors mostly stayed at the homes of a friend or relative with 435.3 million overnights in 2019.

"'Own house took second place with 115.4 million overnights and 'hotel' took third place with 42.7 million overnights," it noted.