Turkey's domestic tourism activities down in Q3

Amid the worldwide collapse in tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic, domestic tourism spending in Turkey continued to fall in the third quarter of 2020 on a yearly basis, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Friday.

While the number of domestic visitors decreased by 28.7% in the July-September period, year-on-year, residents spent 18.86 billion Turkish liras ($2.6 billion), down 19.2% over the same period.

"The highest decreases were package tour expenditures with 39.4%, trip expenditures made before trip with 33.7% and clothing and giftware expenditures with 31.4% respectively," the institute said.

The first quarter data also showed that tourists took 21.7 million trips, decreasing 32% on an annual basis.

Domestic visitors made more than 255 million overnight trips while average number of overnights was 11.7 and average expenditures per trip totaled some 868 Turkish liras ($120.2).

The primary purpose of trips was visiting relatives, accounting for a 58.9% share, followed by travel, leisure, and holiday with 35.7%, and health with 2.4%.

Meanwhile, in the third quarter, the number of visitors and total expenses were more than overall figures during the first two quarters.