According to figures published by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of foreigners visiting Turkey in March 2024 increased by 15.7% to 2,701,244 from 2,335,728 in the same month of the previous year.
In March 2024, the largest influx of foreign arrivals to Turkey was from Germany with 357,296 visitors, followed by Iran with 309,654 visitors, Russia with 248,485 visitors, Bulgaria with 229,932 visitors, UK with 154,948 visitors, and Georgia 122,932 visitors.
In the first three months of 2024, the number of foreigners visiting Turkey was 7,042,850, an increase of 13.4% on the figure for the same period of the previous year. In this year’s period, the largest proportion of foreign arrivals to Turkey were from Iran with 747,559 visitors, followed by Germany with 688,067 visitors, Russia with 682,139 visitors, Bulgaria with 575,233 visitors, Georgia with 329,485 visitors, and UK with 328,887 visitors.
The total number of foreign tourists in the year of 2023 was 49,209,180 visitors, an increase of 10.4% on the number in the previous year, and 9.2% over the previous highest annual figure recorded in 2019. In 2023, the country with the highest number of visitors to Turkey was Russia, with a total of 6,313,675, an increase of 20.7% on the previous year of 2022, but still 10% below its previous highest number recorded in 2019. Visitors from Russia would have been much higher if it was not for Russia’s on-going conflict with Ukraine. Visitors from Germany were next with a total of 6,193,259, an increase of 9.1% on the previous year, followed by the UK with 3,800,922 visitors, an increase of 12.8%, by Bulgaria with 2,893,092 visitors, an increase of 0.4%, by Iran with 2,504,494 visitors, an increase of 7.4%, by Holland with 1,232,220 visitors, a decrease of 1%. There was an improvement in the number of visitors from Ukraine by 24.3% to 839,729, but this was still well below the 2021 prewar figure of 2,060,008 recorded in 2019. Indeed, if it was not for the conflict starting in 2022 between Russia and Ukraine, the total number of foreign visitors to Turkey in 2023 from these two countries would have been at least 2 million higher.
The total number of foreigners visiting Turkey in the year 2019 had increased by 14.1% to 45,058,286 compared with the previous year, a new record. Despite expectations to the contrary, this figure fell drastically in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the Covid pandemic. However, following the lifting of nearly all restrictions relating to the pandemic in the Summer of 2021, the number of tourists visiting Turkey has shown a dramatic recovery, with the number of foreign visitors recovering to 44.6 million in 2022 and 49.2 million in 2023.