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Antalya, which hosts visitors from across the globe in autumn, chiefly Germans and Britons, has received more than 15 million foreign tourists since the start of the year.
Antalya hosted the 77th International Astronautical Congress in early October, with more than 18,000 participants from 111 countries. It is also preparing for COP31 in November. The city has become a venue for a range of international congresses during the autumn months.
While conference tourism keeps the city busy, foreign visitors are also arriving for sports and vacations.
According to Antalya airport data, 15.07 million foreign visitors arrived in the city between Jan. 1 and Oct. 27, more than five times its population of about 2.8 million.
Antalya Governor Hulusi Sahin stated that autumn is going well in the city, helped by favorable weather. Saying international events are especially driving the tourism activity in the city, Sahin said, “COP31 will be an event that covers almost all of November.”
Sahin said the COP31 site will continue to operate as a congress and fair center in the coming years, adding that bringing such a large venue to Antalya will have a positive effect on tourism. He said this will make the autumn months even busier with congress activities.
Underlining that Antalya is a successful city in tourism, Sahin said, “There are 111 million overnight stays in Antalya. These 111 million overnight stays correspond to about 44% of Türkiye’s tourism revenue. It is a huge figure. If Antalya alone were a country, it would be one of the world’s largest tourism countries. Antalya is a city with enough hotels and enough rooms.''
''There is nowhere else left for it to go. We now need to evolve into a new understanding of tourism that continues for 12 months, with neighboring cities, new stories, new destinations and perhaps new transport networks. Antalya is now moving in that direction. God willing, we will be successful in this as well,” he added.
Hakan Saatcioglu, president of the Professional Hotel Managers Association (POYD), said they are having a productive autumn.
Saying reservations for COP31 are continuing, Saatcioglu said, “We learned that there is currently no space left at all in the COP31 fair area. In fact, if there were more space, more could be sold.”
Saatcioglu said the movement of foreign tourists coming for holidays, apart from COP31, also continues at a high level, and added: “We always have high occupancy in September, October and the first 15 days of November, because prices drop during this period. The weather is also very favorable.''
''The sea is still warm. That is why our reservations are still continuing very strongly, and occupancy is quite good right now. We host guests mostly from Germany and other European countries, and we are also receiving heavy reservations from Poland and Belgium. A very large number of reservations is coming in from these areas right now,” he claimed.
Saatcioglu added that golf tourism is also picking up in the city.
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