The ministry's official campaign to promote Turkey's resorts will be launched in January. In 2007, the ministry had three different campaigns, targeting separately the European, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern markets. The ministry found that the strategy worked well and so it will also be the method of this year's campaigns to promote Turkey. The ministry has launched tenders to award the promotion campaigns to private advertising companies; some of these have already been completed.
Özgür Özarslan, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's general manager, said in the past four years, campaigns to promote Turkish tourism have begun as early in the year as January and have proved to be quite fruitful in attracting more tourists. The ministry's $120 million budget to promote Turkey in 2008 will be allocated to 10 separate campaigns in different regions of the world. Video clip showings, billboards, fairs and Internet-based advertising will all be parts of this year's promotional campaigns, Özarslan explained, adding that tourists from the Far East will be lured by highlighting the wealth of sites, artifacts, buildings and monuments Turkey offers for cultural tourism. Turkey's natural beauties, including the sea, sand and sky, in addition to health and spa tourism will be used to attract European tourists.
In the past, representatives of Turkey's tourism sector abroad and ministry officials were usually confronted with questions regarding safety in Turkey. In the past few years, though, this question has started to disappear, Özarslan said. "When we go abroad, we now see that Turkey's image as an unsafe country has disappeared. We don't get questions in that direction anymore." He said the change was a result of campaigns the ministry has been conducting in the past few years.
In the upcoming year, the ministry plans to intensify its campaigns to promote Turkish holiday resorts of Turkey in the United States. Özarslan said the campaign sought to increase the number of wealthier US tourists.
