Golf hotspot Belek on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast has chalked up a strong year, with the number of rounds played in 2013 passing half a million for the second time.
Of those, 98.7% were played by international golf tourists.
Visitor rounds increased by 31,800 last year, a rise of 6.9% and a welcome recovery from a slump of 11.3% experienced in 2012.
Known as the Turkish Golf Riviera, Belek ranks in 21st place in Europe and fourth in the Mediterranean for the number of courses it offers in a destination where 47 five-star hotels attracted two million visitors last year.
Kurtulus Gulsen, chairman of the IAGTO Turkey Chapter, said that the golf tourism industry in Turkey had not reached its goals yet.
The Turkish Golf Federation had set a target of reaching 100 golf courses throughout Turkey.
Revenue per golfer in Belek is currently $670, compared with $1,590 per golfer in Spain – a figure Gulsen said he hoped would improve.
Besides maintaining its traditional markets, Belek is now looking to Asia for golf visitors, Gulsen said.
The peak months for its golf tourism are March, April and May, October and November. These five months account for 67% of the annual rounds played.
Peter Walton, of global trade organisation for the golf tourism industry, IAGTO, said: "This is an example of how the seasonality of golf tourism is significantly more valuable to a destination than its empirical value alone.
"March to May and October-November are outside of Belek’s high summer months and therefore serve to extend the destination’s tourism season significantly, creating employment and revenue even beyond the shoulder months into the low winter season."
The top 10 markets for the Turkish Golf Riviera last year were:
1 Germany
2 United Kingdom
3 France
4 Sweden
5 Finland
6 Netherlands
7 Switzerland
8 Austria
9 Czech Republic
10 Norway
