Governor Şahin: İstanbul tourism is recovering...

Speaking at the opening of the EMITT Tourism Fair, İstanbul Governor Vasip Şahin began his speech by expressing his pleasure at hosting the guests who had come to İstanbul for the EMITT Fair.

“İstanbul is an important destination in Turkish tourism. With its high-quality bed capacity that today reaches 100,000, and with its very high-quality halls and hotels, it is a city that is very well prepared and very well suited for both leisure tourism and congress tourism. İstanbul, which places particular importance on its infrastructure in this area, is at the same time a safe city. We say that İstanbul is at least as safe a city as Tokyo, London, New York, or Paris, because unfortunately terrorism threatens the entire world to the same degree in an asymmetric manner. Whatever share of this threat the world takes, İstanbul takes only that much. Unfortunately, in the previous year, we witnessed the actions of certain opportunistic organizations in İstanbul from time to time, stemming from the chaos in which our region was also caught up. But through the various operations carried out by our state and the measures it took, we, as İstanbul, got through 2017 without incident. We believe we will get through the period ahead without incident as well. On this matter we have taken every measure we can and are striving to implement them at the highest level,” he said.

OUR TOURIST NUMBERS IN DECEMBER–JANUARY ROSE BY 18%

Governor Şahin said: “İstanbul is once again a safe city as it was before, and once again a city that is accessible and livable in terms of tourism. We saw the positive results of this situation in 2017. In the one-year period between January and December, our tourist numbers in İstanbul rose by 18%. For December alone, our rate of increase was 32%. We believe this increase will be even greater in 2018.”

THE ATATÜRK CULTURAL CENTER WILL CONTRIBUTE TO TOURISM WITH ITS NEW FACE

Saying “İstanbul is one of the world’s most important cities for congress tourism,” Governor Şahin stated: “Under the leadership of our esteemed President and our Ministry of Culture and Tourism, we are gaining yet another cultural center: the Atatürk Cultural Center. With its new face and new capacity, the Atatürk Cultural Center will make very significant contributions to congress tourism. It will also serve as a very important venue for artistic activities.”