November / December 2019 No: 169 Green & White Bursa & Uludağ BUTUR 2019 CTM 2019 APG World Connect Lviv AKUT SAVES LIVES Text AKUT to 2930, donate 10TL and save a life yourself. AKUT yaz 2930’a gönder, 10TL bağış yap, bir can da sen kurtar! akut.org.tr twitter.com/AKUT_Dernegi facebook.com/AKUT instagram.com/AKUT_Dernegi youtube.com/akut akut.web.tr AKUT SAVES LIVES Text AKUT to 2930, donate 10TL and save a life yourself. AKUT yaz 2930’a gönder, 10TL bağış yap, bir can da sen kurtar! akut.org.tr twitter.com/AKUT_Dernegi facebook.com/AKUT instagram.com/AKUT_Dernegi youtube.com/akut akut.web.tr EDITOR’S NOTE “Peace at home, peace in the World” Turkey hosted 41.6 million foreign visitors by the end of October 2019, it has achieved 26.63 billion dollars in tourism revenue. Russia, Germany and the UK was most countries sending tourists to Turkey respectively. Meanwhile, Turkey’s 2023 target is 75 million tourists and 65 billion dollars of revenue. As long as there is peace in the world, it is not difficult to reach these figures. The world tourism movement is increasing every year. World clashes, turmoil and wars will not slow down tourism. But again, we will convey the words of our great leader Atatürk for Suat Töre tourism. “Peace at home, peace in the World” In this issue, we bring many news and interesting tourism for you. Green Bursa and Uludağ together is a destination for skiing lovers. Happy reading. In Turkish section, the foreign destination that we are presenting is Lviv, the European city of Ukraine. News from APG World Connect, Cambodia Travel Mart and Bursa Tourism Fair are the other interesting topics that you will find in this issue. We wish you a happy days full of tourism. Contents 6 Turkey News 14 Inbrief 16 World News 20 20 Cover Story: Green Bursa & Uludağ 34 APG - World Connect 36 BUTUR 38 Cambodia Travel Mart 40 Destinasyon: Lviv 44 Bülten 50 Kısa Kısa 6 16 34 36 38 40 4 New Focus | November / December 2019 EDITOR’S NOTE TuRkEy NEwS Both tourist numbers and revenue increases in Turkey Turkey attracted 36.4 million foreign visitors in the first nine months of 2019, marking a 14.5 percent rise, the Culture and Tourism Ministry announced. The Mediterranean resort city of Antalya was the top draw for foreign visitors with a 34.2 percent share, attracting 12.5 million foreigners. Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city by population and a top tourist spot, came in a close second, welcoming 11.3 million foreign visitors from January to September. The northwestern province of Edirne, which borders both Bulgaria and Greece, followed them with 3.4 million foreigners. Ministry data showed that the country welcomed 41.6 million visitors, including Turkish citizens living abroad, up 12.2 percent during the same period. Turkey’s tourism revenue soared 22 percent in the third quarter, up from $11.5 billion in the same period last year, according to Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). The tourism income jumped by nearly a quarter this July-September to $14.03 billion. The TUİK report said, “While 82.1 percent of this income (excluding GSM roaming and marina service expenditures) was obtained from foreign visitors, 17.9 percent was obtained from citizens residing abroad,”. Individual expenditures constituted nearly $9.9 billion of the total tourism income in the three-month period, while some $4.1 billion of the revenues came from package tour expenditures, official figures showed. Turkish Government introduces accommodation tax; sector not happy Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Party submitted a new draft law to the parliament, which proposes regulations on the tax system. The draft legislation includes the introduction of an accommodation tax. The new tax will come into force in April next year. According to the new tax, 5-star hotels and resorts will pay 18 Turkish lira (TL) per person per night, 4-star hotels and resorts will pay 12 TL, 3-star 6 New Focus | November / December 2019 TuRkEy NEwS hotels will pay 9 TL, 2-star hotels, pensions, motels, apart-hotels, and camps will pay 6 TL, boutique hotels and special licensed accommodation facilities will pay 18 TL. The Hotel Association of Turkey TÜROB Chairman Müberra Eresin said, “As of October 2019, Turkey Tourism Promotion and Development Agency (TGA) is established and as part of the law, 7.5 per thousand shares were taken over from hotels’ turnover for funding the agency. Immediately thereafter, the new tax will force the tourism facilities, which have recently started to revive. As the sector, we were not strong enough to handle this load. When both funds and taxes overlap, they will reach a level that will harm the sector,”. Ms. Eresin added that not only the sector couldn’t reach the 2012’s revenue and sales figures in 2019, also hoteliers having difficulty at the loan repayments. Moreover, the room prices are still around 60 percent lower than in 2012. “While taxes on tourism are being reduced all over the world, we face new loads of taxes. This will create a risk of reducing not only foreign guests but also local guests in hotels. The sector should not be interrupted while it is just started to get out of the crisis,” added Ms. Eresin. Vice-Chairman of Turkish Hoteliers Federation (TUROFED) and Chairman of Aegean Touristic Hotels and Investors Associations – ETIK, Mehmet İşler claimed that the sector wanted to be punished with “accommodation tax“. “Mr. Isler asked, “Is the tourism sector punished for success? “. “If this tax is not necessarily to be taken, it should be relative, to be fixed means that the tax comes out of the hotelier’s pocket,” he added. “To introduce new taxes to the sector means to harm and destroy it. The state should pay attention to losses and fugitives, rather than going on to successful, prudent traders who pay their taxes,” Isler added. www.smpublication.com 7 TuRkEy NEwS Turkey Revealed its 2023 Tourism Strategy Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy has revealed Turkey’s Tourism Strategy for 2023 at the conference with domestic and foreign press members held in Istanbul Dolmabahce Palace, on September 27, World Tourism Day. The Minister also showed the new 2020 Advertising Films to be used for promotion of Turkey abroad, developed in accordance with the approaches of the strategy. Bringing Turkish tourism to a sustainable and income-driven growth model, Tourism Strategy for 2023 aims to welcome more than 75 million tourists and reach a tourism income of 65 billion dollars in 2023, as a result of the studies to be conducted and multi-directional new practices. Tourism Strategy for 2023, within the scope of targets determined in 11th Development Plan and benefit from the outputs of 3rd Council of Tourism, summarizes the path to the great change and improvement expected to be made in Turkey’s tourism sector. At the press conference, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy talked about Turkey’s Tourism Strategy for 2023: “Turkey is a world leader that offers a wide array of travel opportunities and that is able to meet the ever-changing expectations of today’s tourists. By putting new strategies into practice set forth in Tourism Strategy for 2023, we will ensure that Turkey will advance to the upper league in global tourism market with its tourist number and size of income. We are aiming that more than 75 million tourists will visit our country and reach an income of 65 billion dollars in 2023. We are planning to realize that by increasing the average spending of a tourist and raising the number of average nights from 9.9 to 10 and thus reaching the average level of spending of 86 dollars per night.” A central agency model for touristic promotion and development, in practice for long years in the countries that are our competitors across the world, is brought into action in our country as well. It has been ensured that the sector has actively participated in tourism publicity through Tourism Promotion and Development Agency of Turkey and it has paved the way for sustainable and effective promotion by broadening the budget resources. We have increased the Ministry’s promotional budget that 8 New Focus | November / December 2019 TuRkEy NEwS was 18 million dollars in 2018 to 72 million dollars in 2019 thanks to the change of policy. We aim to raise the promotional budget to 180 million dollars with our Ministry and newly-established Tourism Promotion and Development Agency of Turkey in 2020. We intend to meet the deficit with great promotional budgets of our competitors in tourism that are in use for the studies which are the products of a long-time investment through yearly increments. In that line, we will work to reach a promotional budget of 220 million dollars in 2023. We will increase our tourism incomes thanks to the promotions with Tourism Promotion and Development Agency of Turkey and as our income increases, our promotional budget will expand as well. In line with these objectives, we will diversify our promotional activities on TV, outdoor, magazine, digital and social media in a focused and intensive way. We are doing market researches in target markets to reach the expectations of the visitors and we’re taking place in all channels by diversifying our promotional strategy in accordance with the said researches. We put emphasis on bringing experience-based Turkey portal and digital applications into action. Besides foreign visitors, we will also carry out promotional studies for domestic visitors to improve domestic tourism.