Turkey Tourism Exceeds Expectations in July, Causes Account Surplus

Turkish tourism exceeded expectations in July, leading to a $286million surplus in Turkey's current account, the first surplus in five years.

This shows that the strong Euro is indeed sending more people outside the Eurozone to find cheap holidays, only more than had been expected. The fact that expectations have been exceeded in July is not surprising, according to Julian Walker, of Turkey property agent Spot Blue.

"We have watched the massive rise in popularity of Turkey as a tourist destination with Britons over the last few years, as word -of-mouth and the developing infrastructure creates a self-perpetuating cycle of continued growth. We knew when the Euro strengthened massively that this would be the catalyst Turkey needed to propel it into one of the most popular tourism destinations for British holidaymakers," he said.

"The fact that the Turkish Lira was incredibly weak against Sterling in the run up to and in July, will also have played a part in the July tourism figures being so massively over expectations," Walker added.

Earlier this year Write About Property spoke to the Association of British Travel Agents and they said that tourism to Turkey had been growing by an average 20-25% per year for the last few years, and will grow at 25% this year, because of the reasons mentioned by Julian and the strength of the Euro.

The Turkish government puts tourism from Britain at 1.9million, and hopes that this figure will grow to 3million in the coming years, making Britain Turkey's largest market, tied with Germany.

Spot Blue is one of the UK's largest Turkish property agents. They are marketing property for sale in Turkey from £25,000. The firm also offers deals on holidays to Turkey.