President Eresin: "We believe the United Kingdom will reopen the travel corridor"

The United Kingdom was one of the first countries to launch flight traffic to Turkey during the pandemic. Unfortunately, this latest decision has caused disappointment. Yet Turkey is among the leading countries that have built the greatest confidence in tourism in Europe through practices such as the Safe Tourism Certificate and the HES code, successfully implemented under the leadership of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Our hotels, our food and beverage venues, all our venues open to tourism, our travel agencies, our tour buses, in short almost all of our tourism-related service areas have been awarded certificates to certain standards, and these practices have genuinely been put into effect very well. These practices have, both nationally and internationally, increased the positive perception that hotels are truly safe places and that all the necessary precautions for accommodation have been taken. No cases were detected among the British tourists who returned to their country from Turkey.

The United Kingdom's decision has also caused disappointment among British tourism professionals. Because almost all of them had plans to extend the season during the autumn period. For instance, in Marmaris, Jet2 Holidays had prepared a program and was going to bring a considerable number of British tourists to Marmaris until the end of this month. Jet2 Holidays had recently increased its flights to Dalaman Airport and had decided to continue its Marmaris program until the end of November. Other British companies had similar plans as well. The British have been unable to travel much within Europe for a long time. Travel from the United Kingdom to Spain and Italy for tourism purposes is closed. They were only able to travel to Turkey. For this reason, we think the United Kingdom will reconsider this decision. We hope it will reassess the situation in the near future and reopen its borders.