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número 5 - junio - 2018. Pág 409 - 433

A first evaluation of the relationship between High Speed Rail (HSR)

and the tourism sector in Turkey: The cases of two Turkish cities

Dalkic, Gulcin

Tuydes-Yaman, Hediye

Delaplace, Marie

Middle East Technical University 1
Université de Paris-Est Marne la Vallée (UPEM)

Abstract
In Turkey, extensive investments have been made to develop HSR services since
2003. As a strategic and growing industry that relies on the increased mobility
among cities and countries, tourism can benefit from these HSR services. But
there are different types of tourism requiring different travel services. Due to this
diversity, it is important to investigate the impact of the HSR lines on the tourism
sector in specific case studies. In Turkey, the highest HSR ridership were observed in
Ankara-Eskişehir and Ankara-Konya HSR corridors, each having more than 1.5 million
HSR passengers annually. Konya is a major place of religious and cultural tourism
attracting more than 2 million tourists every year, and Eskisehir is characterized by
its identity of “University City”, theme parks, cultural and archaeological places that
attract mostly domestic tourism. On one hand, recent studies on the HSR impact on
Eskişehir and Konya showed that the advantages provided by HSR caused an increase
in the number of daily visitors and on the other hand, some studies stated that main
trip purposes for HSR trips were tourism and business. However, the net impact of
HSR on tourism in these two cities has not been investigated. This is the aim of this
paper. First, the change in the HSR ridership for all the existing corridors will be
analysed to understand the development of HSR use. Secondly, tourism potential of
HSR cities will be evaluated based on available tourism statistics, socio-economic
characteristics of the cities, major touristic destinations (in or within the vicinity of
the city) and tourism types. Spatial distribution of the touristic destinations in Konya
and Eskişehir will be evaluated in more detail with respect to accessibility from HSR
station (intermodal connections, public transit availability, etc.) as case studies.

Keywords: high speed rail, tourism, Turkey, Eskişehir, Konya

1 Dalkic, Gulcin. Middle East Technical University, Civil Engineering Department. Email: dalkic@metu.edu.tr.
(corresponding author)
Tuydes-Yaman, Hediye. Middle East Technical University, Civil Engineering Department. Email: htuydes@metu.edu.tr
Delaplace, Marie. Université de Paris-Est Marne la Vallée (UPEM), Lab’Urba, Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris (EUP).
Email: marie.delaplace@u-pem.fr

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