Turkey's tourism income slips in Q1

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's total tourism income dropped by 17.1 percent year-on-year, at $3.37 billion in the first quarter of 2017, according to a report released by Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) on Friday.

The report showed that 71.8 percent of tourism revenue (excluding GSM roaming and marina service expenditures) came from foreign visitors and the rest from citizens resident abroad.

Turkey welcomed nearly 4.9 million foreign visitors in the first quarter of this year, a decline of 5.1 percent from the same quarter in 2016.

"While 77.9 percent of visitors were foreign with 3,772,293 people, 22.1 percent of them were Turkish citizens resident abroad with 1,072,468 people," TurkStat said.

Their average expenditure of tourists was $637 per capita for the quarter.

According to TurkStat, the number of Turkish citizens traveling abroad in the quarter rose by 4 percent over the same period and reached almost 1.9 million.