The situation in Antalya’s hotels is getting worse – the refugees from the earthquake-ravaged area who are temporarily housed there may be offered to leave the streets shortly. Moreover, it is about a hundred thousand people. Aydin Ozer, a member of the CHP opposition party from Antalya, made such a statement on the pages of the Turkish newspaper Turismo Ajansi.
At the same time, the deputy named a short term for solving this problem. “The biggest challenge facing earthquake survivors who have been accommodated in Antalya AFAD (Turkish Emergency Services) hotels is the risk of being evicted from their hotels after 20 days. A monthly contract was signed with local hotels. 10 days passed, and 20 days left. After these twenty days, hotels can start offering earthquake victims to “move out” to start preparing for the tourist season,” the deputy warned.
At the same time, he emphasized that it is about tens of thousands of people – in total, according to the governor’s latest statement, the number of registered earthquake victims arriving in Antalya from the earthquake zone has reached 140 thousand people. More than half of them — 75,000 are also according to official data housed in hotels, apart-hotels, hotel apartments, and hostels throughout the province, another 4,000 of these earthquake victims stayed in guest houses, and 8,000 in hostels. Others found shelter with relatives.
According to Ozer, the earthquake victims are aware of the risks and “started the struggle to establish a new life in other cities.” “The state takes care of us, but we feel responsible, we need to find a job,” the refugees say. We need to assess how they will continue their lives, because if we do not do this, we may face the fact that the victims of the earthquake will remain on the street,” the deputy added.
We should add that an unpleasant trend has already appeared from the side of foreign tourists, on whom Turkish hotels rely, and we are talking about the leading markets — Russia and Germany. In Russia, sales of tours to Turkey have already fallen by 25%: this was told to Kommersant by retail tourism experts. At the same time, tour operators cited as one of the main reasons for this – the fear of tourists that they will have to “share hotels with refugees”, who were sheltered by hotels after the earthquake. The reorientation of tourist flows has also been talked about in Germany – the Germans are also rapidly changing Turkey to other destinations, in particular, to Spain and Greece, and for the same reason – tourists do not want to spend their own money to rest in hotels filled with refugees.