ITB Berlin Highlighted Rebound of World Tourism
ITB Berlin Highlighted Rebound of World Tourism
By Ozgur Tore
A total of 11,163 exhibiting companies and organizations from 188 countries gathered in Messe Berlin for the world’s leading travel trade show; ITB Berlin. UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai attended the opening of the exhibition and said that the next ten years look set to be “the decade of travel and tourism”.
“The first decade of the twenty first century was a decade of extraordinary tourism growth, but also of severe shocks: a decade that began with September 11 and ended with global economic crisis,” said Mr. Rifai. “Now –with recovery underway and international tourist arrivals up by 7 percent in 2010 – is the time to look forward and ask what the next ten years hold for our sector”.
On the other hand, Klaus Laepple, President of Federal Association of the German Tourism Industry (BTW), sees 2011 as a top year for the industry: “2010 was a very good year in many areas of the tourism industry in spite of the problems and the uncertainty but we’re definitely going to beat 2008, which was our best year so far.”
TUI’s CEO in Germany; Volker Böttcher said that the biggest jump in tourism came from Spain in 2011. He also mentioned that there is a 24 percent increase in Turkey package sales.
“The Germans are and will always be travelers,” said Jürgen Büchy, president of the German Travel Association (DRV), adding that Germany spent more money on travel last year than any other country. “All the surveys say they will spend even more on holidays this year,” Büchy added. Germans spend around 60 billion euros a year on trips abroad. Spain is still the top destination, but other countries around the Mediterranean are not far behind – especially Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
Turkish Culture & Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay visited Turkish stand in International Tourism Bourse Fair in Berlin, Germany on Wednesday. When asked whether tourists would prefer Turkey as they could not visit Tunisia and Egypt due to recent protests, Gunay said that Turkey does not compete with African countries in tourism, adding that Turkey competed with countries such as Spain, Italy and France. “We don’t need 100,000 additional reservations coming from Tunisia or Egypt, he said. Noting that tourism could be made only in peaceful countries, Gunay said, Turkey wanted peace in surrounding countries as well as prosperity, democracy and transparency in Tunisia and Egypt.
The minister said a sphinx pair from Hattusa was taken for restoration out of Turkey to Germany in 1917. One sphinx was returned while the other stayed in Germany. It is currently on display in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. Some 3,500 years ago, the magnificent city of Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire, was one of the Bronze Age’s largest settlements.
Based in the heart of Anatolia, and then swallowed up by the earth for millennia, it was rediscovered in the 19th century. German archaeologists began to unearth the site in 1906. Gunay said Turkey allocated 1 million USD to archeological excavations in 2000, and the appropriation rose to 20 million USD in a decade. Regarding Turkey’s tourism, Gunay said the number of tourists visiting Turkey was up 6 percent year-on-year in 2010 and reached 28.6 million. Gunay forecast this figure to be around 30 million by the end of 2011.
