“There is a country that received its indisputable benefit from the war between Russia and Ukraine. And this country is Turkey,” local expert Fehmi Kofteoglu made such a frank statement on the pages of the Turkish Turizmgazetesi. As the expert explained, the current situation has already brought fabulous profits to Turkey — and, most likely, will continue to bring, as the EU will supply Turkey with tourists escaping the winter cold and high prices.
“There is a country for which the situation with Ukraine turned out to be undeniably beneficial. And this is Turkey,” the expert directly stated and offered to look at the situation in tourism from this point of view. According to him, at the beginning it was predicted that the war in Ukraine would have an extremely negative impact on tourism, in particular, this was also predicted by the author of the article.
“Let me say that I was wrong. The war in Ukraine went in favor of Turkey. There are no losses in tourism, on the contrary, the numbers are reaching a record. During this period, the number of visitors and income from tourism increased, and hotels raised their prices,” Kofteoglu said. Moreover, the energy crisis in Europe “forces Europeans to spend the winter months in Turkey,” the expert added. As a result, “hundreds of coastal hotels will remain open this winter at the request of investors, operators and industry employees.”
These are not all positive aspects for Turkey. According to him, Istanbul has become a transit hub for Russia, whose planes could not fly due to sanctions. As a result, in the statistics published by the European Airports Association (ACI), Istanbul and Antalya airports have consistently ranked first in terms of passenger traffic, starting from February. Moreover, Russian migrants who fled Russia en masse in both February and September, after the mobilization was announced, provided Turkish carriers with their most profitable period in recent years. “Even though air ticket prices have increased fourfold, the planes were literally taken by storm,” – declares the Turkish expert.
There are also more global benefits that almost do not apply to tourism. “While there was an energy crisis in Europe, there were no problems in this area in our country, and the war in Ukraine put the transformation of Turkey into an energy distribution center on the agenda,” Mr. Kofteoglu emphasized.