UPDATE - Turkey welcomes nearly 5.5M foreign visitors in Q1

UPDATES WITH NATIONALITY AND TRANSPORTATION DETAILS

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey welcomed 5.44 million foreign visitors in the January-March period, the Culture and Tourism Ministry announced Tuesday.

In the first quarter of 2019, the number of foreign visitors rose by 6.12% on a yearly basis.

Istanbul, Turkey's world-famous touristic city, was the top arriving destination with nearly 3.1 million tourists, accounting for 56.4% of all foreign visitors.

The northwestern province of Edirne, which borders both Bulgaria and Greece, welcomed some 695,000 foreigners.

The Mediterranean resort city of Antalya followed Edirne with over 500,000 foreign visitors in the three-month period.

The most preferred means of transportation was airway with some 3.8 million foreign visitors.

Around 1.5 million and nearly 100,000 foreigners used roadway/railway and seaway, respectively.

Over the same period, Bulgaria topped the list of visitors by country with 482,712 foreigners, accounting for 8.87% of all foreign visitors entering Turkey.

Bulgaria was followed by Iran (447,103), Germany (427,424), Georgia (371,111), and Russia (318,714).

Last year, some 39.5 million foreigners visited Turkey, up 21.84% from 32.4 million in 2017.