Turkey tourism: sun, sea and halal

Forget the bikini-clad Europeans. For a growing number of Turkey’s hoteliers, halal holidays is where the money is at.

With their no-alcohol policy and separate beaches, pools and discotheques for men and women, “family style” holidays are on the rise as hoteliers look to cash in on the new middle class from Turkey’s more religiously conservative Anatolian heartland.

According to Milliyet, the Turkish daily, family-style holidays in Turkey have seen a 200 per cent jump in demand over the past five years.

“There is a tangible and growing demand for halal tourism in Turkey,” Teoman Duman, Associate Professor of Marketing at International Burch University in Sarajevo told beyondbrics. “But due to the political sensitivity of the issue, data is very scarce.”

To be sure, the 200 per cent increase touted in the Milliyet report is coming from a low base. Only five “family-style” hotels existed before 2002, the year the socially conservative AK Party swept to victory, according to Duman. Since then, 39 new seaside establishments have opened, most after 2006.

But there is no denying that halal tourism is a growing niche market. Based on his research using hotels’ own web-site descriptions, Duman reckoned that the halal hotels now make up around 5.6 per cent of the 600,000 hotel beds in Turkey.

Halal tourism is on the rise at thermal spas as well, according to Duman. He said the sector is an important one for Turkey, which is trying to position itself as a distinguished health and wellness destination for European and rich Middle Eastern tourists.

The move into Islamic tourism has also served as a hedge against the eurozone debt crisis, said Nadia Popova, a travel and tourism industry analyst at Euromonitor International.

“Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey, will increasingly go an extra mile, by providing women-only accommodation or halal food, to boost their attractiveness to conservative consumer base and mitigate the negative impact of eurozone woes and political instabilities in the region,” she told beyondbrics.

Tourism is big business for Turkey, generating more than 10 per cent of country’s GDP and more than 7 per cent of total employment. But with growth in the eurozone stagnating and government austerity measures dampening consumer confidence, the decline in European spending has started to bite. Turkish Statistical Institute reported a 6 per cent drop in the number of visiting tourists and a 9.7 per cent decline in tourism-related spending for the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same period last year.

As the number of tourists from Britain, Russia and Germany falls, those working in Turkey’s hotel industry will no doubt hope their halal offerings will attract deep-pocketed visitors from the Gulf countries to make up for the slack.