Dear Member,
Our association was established to foster unity and cooperation among tourist hotels, investors, municipality-registered hotels, and businesses in Alanya and its surrounding areas. Its purpose is to facilitate the coordinated sharing of knowledge and experience in areas such as ideas, professional development, education, and tourism, to conduct scientific and practical studies on problems and solutions, to support the continuous professional development of its members, and to work towards the development of tourism in the region and the country. Established in 1985, our association gained the status of "Association Operating for Public Benefit" with a decision by the Council of Ministers in 2002. It is a founding member and current board member of TÜROFED.
Our main focus is to undertake all kinds of initiatives and services to promote the development of tourism in the region and the country. In this regard, we provide financial and moral support to and carry out all kinds of promotional activities, including the promotion of Alanya, the Alanya Promotion Foundation (ALTAV), tourism fairs, the hosting of tour operator and agency officials, cultural and sports organizations, and promotion on digital platforms.
During our consultation meetings where we come together with our members in various regions, we discussed the evaluation of the 2017 season, the future of tourism and our brand in our region for 2018 and subsequent years, product and market diversification, a quality service approach and price balance, the importance of regional promotion, increasing the recognition of Alanya, structuring image campaigns, cooperation for sustainability, and the necessity of the ALTİD Nova Analysis Regional Data program for understanding the visitor profile. We emphasized these issues and received your opinions and support.
Briefly evaluating the 2017 season, Turkey saw 30,706,245 tourist arrivals in 11 months. Alanya accounts for 12% of Turkey's total hotel capacity, while Antalya accounts for 30%. Consequently, we receive guests in proportions reflecting these figures. One advantage Alanya has compared to Antalya and other regions is the high demand from not only key markets like Germany and Russia, but also from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, regions with lower passenger capacity but significant interest in our region. This is positively reflected in our occupancy rates. Unless an extraordinary situation arises, we anticipate a better 2018.
On the other hand, promotion is very important, but local promotion is even more important.
It is very important that our tourists, our guests, feel safe in the market, on the streets, and throughout our city. We know that any negative experience a visitor has here creates a very significant negative impact on us. Therefore, all sectors and stakeholders need to be much more sensitive in their approach to tourists. As a holiday destination that embodies the concept of tourism integrated with city life and the public, Alanya must prioritize maintaining a comprehensive quality standard within the city, ensuring the continuation of development in terms of guest satisfaction and quality, strengthening and promoting alternative tourism opportunities, and maintaining continuity in areas such as guest profiles and trends, market dynamics, the place and composition of new products, and the training of qualified personnel. We are aware of the necessity of keeping these areas interconnected.
On the other hand, in order to strengthen our communication, our association aims to inform you, our members, about our activities and initiatives through an online bulletin once a month. We are pleased to present this bulletin to you and look forward to your feedback and suggestions.
With this, I would like to wish you a happy new year, and I hope that it will be a productive year filled with health, peace, and success, and that your goals will be achieved.
Burhan SİLİ
President.