Sustainable growth of turkish tourism sector and alternative methods in finance

Abstract

According to the World Tourism Organization- Tourism Highlights 2011 survey in 2010 World`s top destinations, Turkey has the seventh most tourists, with 27 million visitors and the tenth highest revenue from tourism, earning $20,8 billion. In first quarter of 2011 the negative effects of economic and political developments in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East caused early booking cancellations and destination changes in favor of Turkey. If we compare the first quarter of 2011 with the previous year, there was an increase of international tourists to Turkey of 17%, and an increase in tourism revenues of 28.5% in dollars. Turning this positive trend into a sustainable growth in tourism sector and achieving the goal of 63 million tourists and 86 billion dollars in year 2023 as projected by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism depends on improving alternative methods in sectoral finance and support of medium and long-term investments by the government. The subject of this study is to propose alternative methods for tourism finance in Turkey. The first part of this study discusses the current loan structure of tourism sector; the second part discusses existing tax and incentive schemes; the third part analyzes of the alternative finance methods which are used around in the world; and the last part discusses solution proposals for sustainable growth.