ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey on Monday announced that its tourism revenue for the second quarter of this year leaped 23.1 percent to nearly $13 billion. The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said that the country pocketed $12.9 billion in tourism revenues between April and June this year - a 23.1 percent increase on an annual basis, state media reported. Turkey hosted over 22 million tourists, made up of foreigners and Turkish citizens living abroad, in the first half of 2023 - a 20.6 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy was cited by pro-government Daily Sabah as saying that 19.62 percent of the tourists who visited the country were foreigners. “The per capita overnight income, which was $89.2 in the first six months of 2022, was realized as $99.9 in the first six months of 2023. In other words, there is an increase of 11.9%,” the minister added. Turkey’s tourism sector was hit hard during and after the coronavirus pandemic. It recovered in 2022 when the annual income climbed 53.4 percent. Despite the dramatic increase in tourism revenue and recent economic reforms, Turkish lira continues to lose value against the US dollar.
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