Work begins on Istanbul tourism master plan.

A stakeholder meeting for the “Istanbul Tourism Master Plan,” chaired by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Deputy Secretary General Mahir Polat, was held in the meeting hall of Artİstanbul Feshane.

At the meeting — attended by TÜROB President Müberra Eresin, TÜRSAB President Firuz Bağlıkaya, TTYD Board Member Ayla Heyfegil, IMM Tourism Platform Director B. Ümit Öztürk, IMM Tourism Branch Manager Hüseyin Gazi Coşan, TÜROB Secretary General İsmail Taşdemir, along with sector representatives, academics, experts, and IMM executives — the aim is to define a 2025-2030 tourism roadmap by implementing destination management strategies and tools to protect Istanbul's historical, cultural, and natural assets, to provide visitors with tourism services of the highest standards, to increase the contribution of tourism revenues to the local economy, and to ensure that Istanbul residents benefit at a high level from all kinds of tourism services and products.

Taking the floor at the meeting, TÜROB President Müberra Eresin thanked the IMM administration for inviting the sector's stakeholders to the meeting, noting that the Tourism Master Plan to emerge as a result of this work is extremely important for the sector. Conveying up-to-date information on the topics covered in previous tourism master plans, President Eresin said: “As TÜROB, we have been a participant in and a follower of all the master plan studies conducted in the field of tourism in previous periods as well. Tourism master plan studies are among the important documents that solve today's issues, foresee the future, and are continually updated in light of changes in data and instantaneous developments affecting the sector. A tourism master plan draws on many types of data, such as management, law, zoning and clustering, capacity, infrastructure, statistics, communication, and financing. In order for hotel investments in Istanbul to be planned correctly, we want the tourism master plan to be prepared to definitely include an ‘Investment Coordination Board,’ the revisions that need to be made in the area of zoning in consideration of earthquakes and natural disasters, and the planning of not only today but also the years ahead with regard to global warming, sustainability, waste management, and overtourism,” she said.