TURKEY: Football Tourism Struggles With 52M Euro Loss

The Turkish football tourism sector has lost 52 million euros as 23 foreign football teams, mainly ones from Russia, cancelled 900 camps that they would have run in Antalya between January and April. The cancellations came after the Turkey-Russia crisis, which broke out when Turkey downed a Russian fighter jet that violated its airspace.

As a country that annually generates 100 million euros from football tourism, the Turkish tourism sector is facing a major loss. Ferit Turgut, the chairman of the Sports Tourism Association, said that the main crisis will be experienced during the summer, adding that the minimum loss will be around 2 million euros in the best case scenario this summer due to the fighter jet crisis.

Football clubs from 76 countries set up a total of 2,500 camps in Antalya every year. Although business slows down during the winter, the tourism sector generates 100 million euros from football clubs' camps between January and April. Turkey has been deprived of 52 percent of its average football tourism income this year as the number of foreign football teams camping in Turkey dropped by 35 percent. Many football teams from Germany to Japan, which drifted with Russia's tide, cancelled their camps in Antalya.

Turgut said that even a revenue loss of 2 billion euros is an optimistic estimate in this depressing situation and pointed to the difficulties that the football tourism sector might face during the summer.

Football tourism was expecting to be revived to some extent while the Super League took a winter break. This expectation will not become a reality, as it is expected that only 10 or 12 teams of the Super League, which consists of a total of 18 teams, will hold camps in Antalya during the winter break.

According to Turgut, the Turkish cup football matches that will be played on Jan. 9-10 and Jan. 12-14 during the winter break will have a negative impact on football tourism. Normally, the sector generates 2 billion euros from the 10-day camps that the Super League clubs set during the winter break. However, this figure will remain at around 500,000 euros, as clubs will stay in the camps for just three or four days because of the Turkish Cup matches.

Turgut underlined that Turkish football tourism alone cannot reverse the damage done to Antalya's economy.

He also said that in addition to revenue losses, the sector will experience losses because of low prices in 2016, adding that prices will drop by more than 20 percent and that it will be hard to find hotels which have an occupancy rate of 100 percent.