Poor Tourists Favor Turkey

The report points out the money tourists spend on entertainment in Paris, the world’s most popular tourist destination, is exactly 70 times what tourists spend on entertainment in Turkey. Every year 26 million tourists visit Paris, and the income they provide to the entertainment sector alone is 3.5 billion euro. While Istanbul attracts 2.6 million tourists annually, the entertainment sector makes only 50 million dollars. Tourists who visit London spend 2 billion dollars on ententainment, and visitors to Las Vegas spend 800 million dollars on entertainment. These last two figures represent 50 times and 14 times, respectively, what a tourist in Istanbul spends on entertainment. The substantial tourist income in cities such as Paris, London and Las Vegas allow them to develop real entertainment industries.

Tourists in Turkey eat in their hotel rooms, and go to the bars, discos or cafes of the hotels where they are staying, representatives of firms in the Turkish entertainment sector told the conference. Tourists who come to Turkey will do anything to not pay a cloak-room fee of one dollar, and they certainly don’t go to luxury entertainment places such as Laila and Reina in Istanbul. The main points of agreement for the conference participants were that tourism is no longer only about sun, sea, and beach , and that the entertainment sector does not get its fair share of the tourism pie in Turkey.

Mustafa Ozge / Istanbul / TURKEY