Tourism Survival in Times of Turmoil - Will Turkey's Tourists Move to Safer Places?
The uncertainty of traveling or planning vacations during periods of unrest is significantly affecting the global aviation and tourism industry. Rising fuel costs, but above all fears of escalating conflicts, have led to an immediate drop in demand in some of the main destinations.
In this context, attention shifts to Turkey, as one of the main tourism "magnets" for the Albanian and Balkan markets. The question that arises is whether tourists will start looking for alternatives further away from the hotbeds of conflict, such as Spain or Italy.
Besnik Vathi, Head of Tour Operators: "As long as Turkey is not involved in this war yet, I believe that there will be no diversion of tourism from Turkey to other countries. The involvement of Turkey would probably be much more serious, not just for tourism in Turkey, but for tourism globally. The expansion and escalation of the situation by bringing Turkey in, by bringing NATO in, by bringing other regions in, I think it would not be good for tourism in general, in any country in the world, not just towards Turkey."
According to Vathi, even in previous cases of tensions with Russia or internal unrest, the Turkish market has shown resilience, recovering much faster than other global destinations. For tour operators, the challenge remains maintaining competitive offers to encourage travel in these uncertain times.
"Having the experience of numerous events over the past 30 years in Turkey, or even the situation with Ukraine, wars are generally localized in those places where they take place. So, traffic is only blocked in the country where the war or the region is involved and flights or trips to other destinations begin on the same scale. Will there be a diversion? I remember that Albanians went for tourism even at the time when Öcalan, from a Kurdish party, was carrying out terrorist acts in Turkey here and 25 years ago. Or in the conflict that Russia had with Turkey, it was not the Russians who went but from the Balkans, from Albania, there was tourism. Or even in the case of the coup d'état in Turkey that lasted a week, after a week and ten days everything normalized. I don't believe it... Turkey is used to having situations, but it managed to get out of the conflict zone quickly."
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