| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 17/04/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 59 |
| Copyright: Other |
TURKEY
After a year of bad publicity, Turkey has embarked on aggressive marketing campaigns to lure tourists back.
Operators are in agreement that 2000 will be the year Turkey begins to get back on track.A spate of co-operative marketing projects between the tourist office and the major operators is aiming to bring visitor levels back to the record-breaking 1998 number of almost 1m UKtourists.
Turkish Tourist Office director for UK and Ireland Savas Kuce said: “This year will be a recovery year. Next year will be the big step for us. I am expecting about 1.2m-1.25m visitors next year – which is up by about 20%. It is normal after you get sick to have a period of time for recovery.”
Chairman of the newly formed Association of Specialist Turkish Tour Operators and Anatolian Sky managing director Akin Koc agreed.
“Next year will be the big year for two reasons: one, all the people who were planning to visit last year but didn’t, will now visit; and two, once people see that there is no danger in visiting the country, they will return in larger numbers.
“There cannot be another Balkan war, another Kurdish terrorist group like the PKK, or another earthquake this year,” he said.
While there can be no doubt that last year was bad – leading to the collapse of at least one operator – Allegro – both specialists and majors remain confident for this year, despite the deaths earlier this month of two Leeds United football fans who had travelled to Turkey to watch their team play Galatasaray in the first leg of the UEFACup semi-final.
Tapestry sales and marketing director Andrew Lee said: “We are marketing Turkey very aggressively at the moment. Our newest brochure came out in October last year and it was the same size as the previous one.”
Though pre-winter bookings were slow, Tapestry is now just 4% down on this time last year, which was actually before any of the troubles began, noted Lee.
According to several operators though, early bookings could have been stronger had the budget for the co-operative advertising become available sooner. “Any support from the TTO is gratefully received, but what has come is about three months too late.
“Everybody was promised advertising subsidies at the end of November, but they didn’t actually come through until March,”said Lee.
Akin Koc agreed, adding that one of the main reasons ASTOwas set up in the first place was that many operators felt they had been ignored last year. One of the key achievements of the new group he said was a meeting with the new Turkish minister of tourism Erkan Mumcu.
“I tried to explain thousands of times that if we didn’t get the money on time then we wouldn’t get the value out of it. I had to stress that the UK was an early-booking market,” said Koc. However, Kuce was sceptical about the suggestion that earlier funding would have benefited the operators.
“The season begins in February really, and the first advertisement came out on February 8 – so we are late by only eight days at the most.
“Our Mediterranean neighbours only began to start their advertisements at the beginning of March,”he said.
Though JMC product director Alan MacLean echoed other operators’ disappointment that the budgets were delayed, he was glad to point out that the summer programme was down by less than average.
“UK operators on the whole have cut capacity by about 30%. JMC has cut its flying capacity by about 20%,” he said.
“It is showing signs of coming back – but not to pre-1999 levels. Turkey really had everything bad happen to it last year, bar the plague of locusts.”
Tourist attractions: operators are hoping that sights, such as the mosques in Istanbul, will entice people back to Turkey
Advertising campaign
Budget spending: television: £765,000 (LWT, GMTV and Sky). Radio: £60,000 (Virgin and Talk Radio). Newspapers: £128,000. National press colour supplements: £368,000. Outdoor hoardings: £250,000 (London Underground, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester). Trade press and specialist press (golf, yachting and conference and incentive magazines): £30,000. Outdoor hoardings in Ireland:£60,000. Irish TV (RTE) £170,000.