Turkey visitors down over 30% in April as tourism slumps

The number of foreigners visiting Turkey crashed by almost 30 percent in April as tourists stayed away due to security fears following a wave of attacks and tensions with Russia, statistics showed Friday.

The fall was the steepest monthly decrease for 17 years and raises new concerns about the health of the industry heading into the crucial summer season.

Some 1.75 million foreigners came to Turkey in April, down 28.07 percent on April 2015, the tourism ministry said in its latest release.

Arrivals from Russia were down 79.3 percent, with tourism from what was once a key consumer of tours to Turkey almost wiped out by the row over Ankara's shooting down of a Russian plane in November last year.

But arrivals from other nations were affected by the security situation in Turkey, which has seen several deadly attacks blamed on jihadists and Kurdish militants this year alone.

The US embassy in Turkey in April warned of "credible threats" to tourist areas in Istanbul and the resort city of Antalya, in particular to public squares and docks.

Visitors from Germany, whose nationals account for the most visits to Turkey, were down over 35 percent while from Britain they were down over 24 percent.

The only major nations to show growth were from the Middle East, countries that Turkey is banking on to offset slowing tourism from the West.

Arrivals from Iran and Saudi Arabia were up 1.5 and 1.8 percent respectively but this modest climb was well down on the sharp growth from these markets seen last year.

Foreign tourism had been declining all year but the fall in April was by far the steepest yet and will be hugely alarming to the Turkish authorities in a country where the industry brought in $31.5 billion in revenues in 2015.

The Hotel Association of Turkey (TUROB) warned this week that hotels in Turkey in April were just 52.2 percent full, a fall of 22 percent from the same period last year.

Hotel occupation fell 15.1 percent in the first four months, the steepest fall in Europe. The average price of a hotel room in Istanbul was just 115 euros ($128) compared with 130 euros ($145) the year earlier.

Ozgur Altug, economist at BGC partners in Istanbul, predicted in a note to clients that the tourism sector would contract by some 15 percent this year.

The government has already announced a multi-million-dollar aid package for the struggling tourism industry to help firms and restructure debt.