Turkey to host 30 million tourists in 2010

Turkish culture and tourism minister has set a target to host 30 million tourists in Turkey in 2010 despite a global economic crisis.

“We are expecting around 26 million tourists this year and our target for 2010 is 30 million if we could overcome the crisis,” Ertugrul Gunay told the Anadolu Agency.

Gunay said Turkey ranked 7th in the world in terms of number of tourists and 9th in terms of the revenues from tourism sector.

The Turkish minister also said the number of visitors increased by 1.1 percent as of July over the same period last year as other Mediterranean countries continued to see sharp drops such as Spain which he said had lost 5-8 percent of its visitors.

Gunay said number of tourists from France had increased up to 1 million in 2009 after “Turkish Season in France” had opened earlier this year, adding that 2010 would be “Japanese Year” in Turkey.