In the first ten months of the year, the number of tourists to visit Istanbul increased by 15.7 percent totaling over 8 million people, according to numbers from the Istanbul Cultural and Tourism Department.
While 449,258 visitors arrived to Istanbul as day trippers from the Karaköy port, the number of arrivals at airports totaled 7,492,717, a 17 percent increase compared to figures from the year prior. Arrivals by sea dropped by 1.2 percent, totaling 508,391.
Germans at 11.6 percent were the highest nationality of tourists to come to Istanbul in the first ten months of the year.
Germans were followed by Russian at 5.6 percent, Americans at 5.3 percent, Brits at 4.7 percent, French and Italians at 4.6 percent, Iranians at 4.4 percent, the Dutch at 2.8 percent, Iraqi’s at2.3 percent, Libyans at 2.2 percent, Spaniards and Azerbaijanis at 2.1 percent, Ukrainians and Japanese at two percent and Saudi Arabians at1.9 percent.
While the total number of tourists from Arab nations that arrived in the first ten months of the year increased by 54 percent, Libyans took the top with an overwhelming 544.4 percent increase in tourists to Istanbul.
During the ten month period the number of foreign visitors to Istanbul from Arab countries increased by 14.6 percent. A total 1,166,319 visitors came to Istanbul from Arab nations, with 182,000 being from Iraq, 173,797 from Libya and 155,807 from Saudi Arabia.
According to data from the Istanbul Cultural and Tourism Department, the breakdown of the number of tourists that visited Istanbul in the first ten months of the year is as follows:
January – 451,662
February – 494,124
March – 659,826
April – 818,788
May – 867,511
June – 939,508
July – 966,337
August – 950,062
September – 940,156
October – 913,134
Total – 8,108,000