between Russia and Ukraine. And this country is Turkey,” local expert Fehmi Kofteoglu made such a frank statement on the pages of the Turkish Turizmgazetesi. among the losers,” will supply tourists to Turkey fleeing the winter cold and high prices.
“There is a country for which the situation with Ukraine turned out to be undeniably beneficial. And this is Turkey,” the expert stated bluntly and offered to look at the situation in tourism from this point of view. According to him, at the beginning it was assumed that the situation in Ukraine would have an extremely negative impact on tourism, including the author of the article himself. “Let me say that I was wrong. The incident in Ukraine benefited Turkey. There are no losses in tourism, on the contrary, the figures are reaching a record. During this period, the number of visitors and tourism income increased, hotels increased their prices,” said Mr. Kofteoglu. Moreover, the energy crisis in Europe, caused by anti-Russian sanctions, “forces Europeans to spend the winter months in Turkey,” the expert added. As a result, “hundreds of hotels in coastal areas will remain open this winter at the request of investors, operators and industry employees.”
These are not all the positives. According to him, Istanbul has become a transit hub for Russia, whose planes could not fly due to sanctions. As a result, in the statistics published by the European Airports Association (ACI), every month, Istanbul and Antalya airports have consistently ranked first in terms of passenger traffic since February. Moreover, Russian migrants, who fled en masse from Russia both in February and September, after the announcement of partial mobilization, provided Turkish carriers with the most profitable period in recent years. “Despite the fact that airfare prices have quadrupled, planes have literally been taken by storm,” says a Turkish expert.
There are more global benefits, almost no longer related to tourism. “While there was an energy crisis in Europe, there were no problems in this area in our country, and the Ukrainian incident put on the agenda the transformation of Turkey into an energy distribution center,” Mr. Kofteoglu noted, for example.
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