Looking to also capitalize on increased demand for Turkiye, one of Europe’s leading low cost airlines Wizz Air is launching new routes to Istanbul, Antalya and Dalaman from a total of eight airports some of which are in the UK.
Mainly using Gatwick and Luton, Wizz Air already fly to around 100 destinations and based on the recent announcement the new routes will start in March and May. Gatwick to Antalya & Istanbul + Luton to Istanbul will start in March and Gatwick to Dalaman will start in May.
Other cities to offer the new flights will also include Budapest to Istanbul & Antalya, Yas to Istanbul, Cluj Napoca to Antalya, Bucharest to Antalya, Debrecen to Istanbul and Abu Dhabi to Istanbul. The additional routes will equate to around 600 Turkish flights this year.
It’s really no surprise that airlines are picking up on the demand, as the Culture and Tourism Ministry recently released new stats showing that foreign nationals to Turkey has risen by 44.64% when compared to a year previous. For the period January to November of 2022, 5.48m German tourists arrived, followed by 4.95m from Russia and 3.3m from the United Kingdom.
Looking at 2023, predicted numbers are set to be around 60m passengers contributing approx. 56bn USD worth of revenue to the economy. Certainly the hope is that as a minimum the figures beat 2019 (pre-covid) which saw 52 million passengers arriving, contributing just over 34bn USD to the economy.
