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Tourism Minister Ersoy: We are closing this year with records in tourism

Minister of Culture and Tourism Ersoy said, “Turkiye has started to break records, especially since last year. It has started to equal its records. And this year, we have come to the end of the year again. I hope we are closing this year with records in terms of both the number of visitors and income.”

Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, in his speech at the headmen’s meeting held in a hotel in Muratpasa district, said that Antalya is a city that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan follows closely.

Emphasizing that Antalya is of primary interest to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism because it has a very important place in terms of both its cultural values and tourism economy, Ersoy stated that he comes to the city very often because he is from Antalya.

“Turkiye has started to break records, especially since last year.”

Emphasizing that they experienced a very busy period in terms of both tourism and cultural activities in Antalya, Ersoy said:

“Turkiye has started to break records, especially since last year. It has started to equal its records. And this year, we have come to the end of the year again. I hope we are closing this year with records in terms of both the number of visitors and income. Antalya will take the lead as the city that generates the most income in tourism. There are also great cultural events. Especially in 2022 and 2023, we, as the ministry, started to focus more on cultural activities. We ensure that our cultural values are revived and restored, that excavation sites are intensively excavated and brought back to our provinces and districts, and that these are supported with events. We also held the cultural road festivals in Antalya this year. We received very positive reactions. It also made us happy. Last year it was in 5 cities. This year, we have increased to 11 cities in 2023. In 2024, we will hopefully announce it next week, we will spread the cultural road festivals to 15 or 16 cities. We want to expand the cultural road festivals to all our metropolitan cities by adding 5 cities every year.”

“We have increased the budgets of the excavation sites incredibly”

Minister Ersoy stated that they focus especially on archeology and excavation works in Antalya and stated that there are excavation directorates at 19 points.

Stating that they carried out a very intensive work in Side Ancient City last year, Ersoy said, “After the positive results we received here, we included Phaselis, Olympos, Syedra in Gazipasa and lastly Perge in the intensive excavation program in 2023. We increased their budget incredibly. So there are points where we increased it by 20 times and 30 times. We do not proceed by just digging, restoration and innovation. Due to the characteristics of Antalya, it gets very hot during the day in summer. We also took care of the lighting. We illuminate the area where we have carried out many restorations and make it open to visitors after sunset. Our aim here is not to limit touristic visits to hotels. Let the tourists go out of the hotel. Let him travel around the country. Tradesmen should also benefit.”

After the speech, the meeting continued closed to the press.

Source: Trthaber / Prepared by Irem Yildiz

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