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In the tourist destination of Marmaris, nestled between turquoise waters and pine-covered mountains on Turkey’s southwest coast, hotelier Mustafa Deliveli is preparing for a summer he fears could sink the city’s tourism business.
Bookings at the Hotel Emre in Deliveli have a maximum capacity of 15% for June, one of the “most important months” of the season, when your rooms are usually full, he said. But a wave of coronaviruses in the spring has caused Russia, Germany and Britain, Turkey’s three largest tourism markets, to impose onerous travel restrictions, threatening a sector that provides millions of jobs and vital currency.
“We’ve had our share of tourism crises over the years, but that’s unprecedented,” said Deliveli, who has shut down a third of its staff and closed half the hotel to cut costs. “Last year we kept our heads above the water and had high hopes this season. It’s been a big disappointment.”
A collapse of tourism would occur in the economy as a whole. Turkey depends on visitors’ foreign exchange inflows to finance its external debt and a current account deficit that stands at 5% of gross domestic product, as well as to replenish foreign exchange reserves exhausted to prop up a weak coin.
Tourist cash has become even more critical since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the central bank governor in March, prompting foreign investors to pour $ 1.8 billion net of Turkish stocks and bonds.
In an effort to attract visitors, Erdogan ordered a national shutdown for most of May to curb the pandemic. Most visitors are now exempt from PCR testing for the virus, and the government’s “safe tourism” program has prioritized vaccination of tourism workers and certified 10,000 hotels and other operators that meet strict hygiene standards. Covid-19 cases reported daily have dropped to nearly 6,000, from a record 63,000 in April.
With 5,000 miles of coastline and tainted Greek and Roman ruins, Turkey was the sixth most visited destination in the world before the coronavirus outbreak, which attracted 52 million tourists and $ 35 billion in revenue in 2019. the pandemic decimated world tourism last year, the number of visitors to Turkey was in the past. and revenues fell by about 70% in 2020 over the previous year.
The tourism ministry had targeted 30 million tourists and $ 23 billion in revenue by 2021, but that may no longer be within reach, with a third fewer tourists arriving in the first four months than in the same period last year.
“The pandemic has caused a number of fires [but] tourism maintains its serious position in Turkey’s balance of payments and provides 2 million jobs, ”Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy told FT.
Tourism, both directly and indirectly, accounted for 13% of GDP before the pandemic. Without a significant rebound this year, up to one percentage point could shave economic growth in 2021, said Roger Kelly, an economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Istanbul.
Tourism revenues also reduce Turkey’s trade deficit and sustain the lira, which has lost 14% of its value this year as Erdogan’s pressure on the central bank to cut interest rates grew fed double-digit inflation.
“Life in Turkey will be much easier if tourism recovers. If it doesn’t, it means one more year in the fight for the economy, “Kelly said.” It’s not a magic wand, but it would relieve a lot of pressure on the Turkish economy. “
In Marmaris, nine out of 10 hotels remained closed in late May, Deliveli said. Most survived the 2020 collapse through loans or cost reductions, but “now is the time to pay, and if things go as they did last year, many operators will fail or be forced to sell,” he said. .
About 2.6 million Britons traveled to Turkey in 2019 and typically accounted for about half of Deliveli’s guests. He has not booked any reservations from Britain this season, as the UK government required arrivals from the country to stay in a quarantine hotel and do a PCR test at his expense. Erdogan has said he and Johnson will discuss tourism at a NATO summit next week and has also sent Ersoy to Moscow and Berlin to push for an end to his restrictions.
Germany, which sent 5 million tourists to Turkey in 2019, has said returnees no longer need to be quarantined if they are vaccinated or tested negative. Russia, Turkey’s main tourist source, has extended the ban on most flights between the two countries until June 21. “Once air traffic resumes, Turkey will be in a hurry because guests do not cancel reservations, but postpone them,” Ersoy said.
But Bahattin Yucel, a former tourism minister, said it was already too late for this season “to be better than last year, and we have to do it in the absence of success in coronavirus management.”
One recent afternoon, a handful of tourists toured the vast ruins of Perge, a 3,000-year-old archeological site ruled by Alexander the Great and adorned with magnificent mosaics.
Ali Cikla has traveled the ancient roads of Perge “thousands of times” during his four decades as a tour guide. Since the pandemic occurred, he has led only five groups and his income has fallen by 90%. Still, he is absolutely aware that the mix of sun, sea and history of Turkey is irresistible.
“It may take a few years, but people will come back,” he said. “The pandemic will never last, but Perge will.”
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