ISTANBUL, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced on Friday that the country is adopting a new income- and market-oriented strategy for sustainable growth in the tourism sector.
Speaking at a conference in Istanbul, Ersoy said "we will raise our country to a higher level in the global tourism market in terms of the number of tourists it receives and the amount of revenue it gains."
Under the new strategy, Turkey expects to attract over 75 million tourists, with 65 billion U.S. dollars in tourism revenue by 2023, the year when Turkey mark its centennial anniversary, said the minister.
He noted that the sector plans to increase the revenue mostly by raising the average expenditure per tourist to 86 dollars per night, up from 65 dollars in 2018.
Turkey achieved a tourism income of 29.5 billion dollars last year, with tourist arrivals standing at 46 million, show the official data.
According to Ersoy, Turkey seeks to have 4 million tourists from the Far East and Oceania region by 2023, up from this year's projected 1 million.
"In the upcoming period, we will focus more on China, India, South Korea and Japan, which are considered as resource markets fueling the world tourism growth," he said. "We expect the number of tourists coming from the Asia Pacific region to increase by more than 30 percent between 2018 and 2023."
To meet the new goals, Turkey will focus more on diversifying the promotions, introducing new gastronomy centers across the country, offering new cultural tours and devoting more to cruise-yacht travel, Ersoy said.
Turkey's tourism has been rebounding after suffering from a spate of terror attacks in particular in the past years.
