Page 419 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

A first evaluation of the relationship between High Speed Rail (HSR) and the tourism sector in Turkey: The cases of
two Turkish cities

3.3 Tourism sector inTurkey

Turkey is characterized by different tourism types such as coastal tourism, cultural tourism,
thermal tourism, religious tourism. The share of tourism sector in Gross National Product (GNP)
of Turkey has increased from 0.8% to 4% between 1983 and 2013 and it employs more than 12
million people. Turkish tourism sector succeeded to become in the top ten countries that attracts
more international tourists with 29.9 million visitors in 2012. In 2014 as in in 2015, Turkey is
at the sixth position in the world with respectively 39.8 and 39.5 millions of foreign arrivals
(United Nations World Tourism Organization-, 2016). Ministry of Culture and Tourism Statistics
showed 25 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2016, with top three countries of nationalities
as Germany, Georgia and United Kingdom. The statistics showed that majority of the foreign
tourists arrived Turkey by airway (70.1%) followed by road transportation with 23.8%. Railway
had a very small share with 0.06% and maritime transportation had about 6% share (Ministry of
Culture and Tourism, 2017).

According to the 10th Development Plan (prepared for 2014-2018 years), tourism sector is
expected to constitute 45 million dollar share of 1.3 billion dollar Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) of Turkey. Also the number of international tourist is expected to reach 48.3 million by
2018 (Ministry of Development, 2014). Moreover, in the 2023 Tourism Strategy of Turkey, the
aim is to make Turkey in the top five countries in the world concerning the tourists’ number
and the tourist’ revenues and to develop domestic tourism. Additionally, 8 thematic zones have
been proposed including some HSR cities (For instance Phryg cultural and thermal tourism zone
concerns Eskisehir and Afyon).

4. Evaluation of the link between HSR and tourism in Turkey

4.1 Methodology

The study aimed to present a preliminary evaluation of the link between HSR and the tourism
sector in two Turkish cities as Eskişehir and Konya. In order to give general information on
city- based characteristics, a general evaluation was presented for all HSR cities including
population, employment rate, satisfaction with urban transportation services, life index ranking
and human development index. Secondly, tourism potential of HSR cities was 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 was evaluated in more detail with the prepared
maps and the accessibility of touristic destinations from HSR station (intermodal connections,
public transit availability, etc.) was investigated.

4.2 General presentation of HSR cities

A background information is presented in Table 5 for the seven cities currently served and six
cities soon to be served by HSR, showing population, population change rate for the period of
2016 and 2023, satisfaction with in-city transportation service, life index ranking and human
development index. İstanbul and Ankara are the two biggest cities as mentioned above. Bursa
and İzmir also have high populations of 3 and 4 million, respectively, that will have HSR services
soon. While Kocaeli and Konya have populations around 2 million by 2023; but, Eskişehir, Sakarya
and Manisa will be relatively smaller cities with populations around 1 million people. On the
other hand, Bilecik, Sivas, Afyon and Uşak are much smaller cities on the HSR corridors, which
are also not expected to have high population change rate. While these smaller cities seem to
have slightly higher employment rate than others, the employment rates of the cities seem to
be stuck within the range of 40%-55%. Big cities like Ankara and İstanbul seem to have problems
in transportation services, while people in smaller cities have much higher satisfaction with
transportation services.

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