30.4 million visitors to Turkey in January-November

 

The number of foreign visitors to Turkey rose 0.6 percent between January and November of this year, reaching 30.4 million people, data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed yesterday. Turkey's total revenue from tourism in 2011 equaled $23 billion, while this figure for the first three quarters of this year was $17.3 billion, the ministry's data reveal. Germany sent the highest number of visitors to Turkey in November at 263,034; Georgia followed with 123,532 and Bulgaria with 112,476. Ongoing domestic violence in its southern neighbor Syria translated into an approximately $1.2 billion loss in Turkish tourism revenues in 2012, and the number of tourists from the region fell by 2 million over figures from 2011, Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay said yesterday. On the other hand, the number of visitors from other regions recorded an increase from January to November of this year.