At the Alanya stand, as in every year, the Alanya city guides prepared in Finnish, 2010 calendars, cloth bags with the Alanya logo, pens, large and small evil eye beads, hotel guides, coloring books prepared for children, Alanya illustrated puzzles, and Alanya promotional DVDs received great interest.
Additionally, next to the Alanya stand, as an event organized by ALTAV, Aslı Eda Şemenoğlu, who is part of the Alanya team, drew great interest at the fair by painting watermelons brought from Alanya with traditional motifs for 4 days. We stood out as one of the elements that enriched the Turkey stand with this event. Many media outlets (Iltalehti etc.) took photos of our watermelon stand and gathered information. Furthermore, the watermelons were presented as gifts to tour operators and important media members.
The Türkiye stand was quite enlivened with various activities this year. Visitors racing on the Istanbul Park track in a Formula 1 simulator participated in a raffle sponsored by tour operators. Turkish delight and Turkish coffee were continuously served at the stand, and live Turkish music performances were presented at intervals. Additionally, at the cocktail held on the first day at the Türkiye stand, we had the opportunity to reunite with many media members with whom we are in contact and held discussions regarding cooperation for the upcoming period.
In the meeting held with the Helsinki Tourism Attaché Mr. Ahmet Kaplan, it was agreed on joint efforts to be carried out regarding Alanya in promotional campaigns and press trips.
In meetings held with tour operators, we generally observed that the 2010 seat plans have been increased by approximately 15% compared to 2009. To give an example, Detur’s 2009 capacity of 20,000 seats was increased to 22,500 in 2010, and Aurinkomatkat’s 2009 capacity of 10,000 was planned as 11,500 for 2010.
In addition, meetings held with other important tour operators, Finnmatkat and Nazar, also went positively, and we learned that Turkey sales are performing much better on a daily basis compared to last year.
It was very positive news that Aurinkomatkat, in particular, achieved its best sales in the Turkish market after Spain this year, surpassing Turkey ahead of Greece and Italy.
Regarding our work on Alanya-Gazipaşa Airport, we maintained interest in this matter by presenting the airport's brochures and its latest technical status to all the tour operators we met with. We also held a detailed meeting with the airline companies Air Baltic and Air Finland regarding our new airport.
We have reached an agreement with a journalist from YLE, considered Finland's TRT, to come to Alanya at the end of February to see Alanya-Gazipaşa Airport on-site and conduct interviews with official authorities, and we carried out the preliminary work regarding this matter there.
Alongside these, in the meeting we held with the executives of Matkalehti, one of Finland’s two largest travel magazines, we invited them to Alanya and discussed collaborating on joint news coverage.
Additionally, we have reached an agreement with Independent Press, a growing media group covering Finland and the Baltic countries, which we became acquainted with through our sister city Rovaniemi, to produce a detailed news report about Alanya.
In a meeting we held with a tour operator that works with countries located in the Mediterranean basin such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Greece, we shared detailed information about Alanya and Turkey, inviting them to work with Turkey as well.
In our meetings with tour operators, we made suggestions to encourage "long stayer" packages, which constitute silver tourism. Since the product in question will support winter tourism, our Foundation is emphasizing it with great importance.