A Short Alarm Bell from Turkish Tourism Statistics
With the political crisis and the CBT rates decision, Friday’s dismal May tourism statistics went almost unnoticed:
I am aware that dismal is too strong a word. After all, tourist arrivals and departures are still growing. But the 4.3 percent yoy increase in arrivals is a large fall from the past months’ two-digit figures, especially when you think that the same figure was 31.3 percent in April.
Tourism revenues for May are not yet available, but the key will be the summer months, where the country makes most of its revenues:
Now, that’s what you call seasonality!:), not some wimpy real sector confidence index!:)
Anyway, many analysts have been penciling in strong tourism revenues for the summer for their current account predictions. Besides, the lira holds during the summer months because of large tourism revenues, so it is crucial whether tourism will have a strong summer season or not. But regardless, Turkey’s main structural tourism problem of declining revenues per tourist is likely to remain intact in the near future. You’d need a comprehensive tourism strategy to change that.
BTW, on my way to Jordan last month, I saw, for the very first time, how these statistics are gathered: A couple of guys from TurkStat were going around handing out surveys to foreigners. I chatted with them for a few minutes, and it seems that there is no sampling done; they just catch whoever they can. Which is not that bad, when you think about it, as long as they don’t spend too much time in one place- for example, I met them at Starbucks: I am sure someone paying over 10 liras for a frappuccino spends more than the average tourist:)
Comments are closed.
