‘Fall’ of Aegean hoteliers
It is marketing season for Aegean hoteliers, as 95 percent of them close down their facilities during the winter and look forward to the new tourist season. In groups or individually, they participate in tourist fairs for their target countries and try to promote their hotels but they cannot stay calm; many problems are waiting to be answered at home.
The huge bed capacity of approximately 700,000 in the Antalya region is again the main problem for Aegean hoteliers. The luxury hotels and holiday villages with low prices tipped the balance long ago for Antalya, to the detriment of small Aegean tourist resorts. Marmaris, Bodrum, Fethiye and Çeşme hotels have been reducing their prices each year, but they still fail in the competition against giant accommodation companies in Antalya.
Losing income over the years, many of those small hotels have unfortunately also left behind the quality of their service. In recent years, it has turned into a vicious circle of less income and lower quality.
In this case, the European tour operators bringing tourists to Turkey prefer the Antalya region for lower costs, more profit and high service quality. Aware that hoteliers are ready to accept any conditions, operators have been mercilessly taking advantage of the competition between Antalya and Aegean hotels. In the last decade, they pushed the accommodation companies to reduce room prices by showing them cheaper contracts from Antalya hotels, even though they knew those facilities will struggle to survive and decrease their quality.
And now, according to operators’ charter schedules, the 2008 season seems to be more difficult for tourism in southern Aegean resorts. Neckermann, Sun World and My Travel have already announced they will reduce the number of flights to Dalaman Airport because of the high costs. After the Matka Travel Market in Helsinki, the biggest tourist fair in Scandinavia, Aegean hoteliers are once again disappointed by the news from their operators. Finnmatkat, Aurinkomatkat and Detur, three leading companies controlling the tourist flow from Finland to Turkey, will have only three charter flights in total to the Dalaman area, which means only 600 holiday-makers a week.
Some 20 years ago, Finnish tourists were the first and the largest groups to come to Marmaris every season. Local people know that Finns gave the start to the tourism activities in this city in early 1980s. Compared to the past, today’s situation is a pessimistic picture for the sector.
What, then, is the future of the tourism business under these conditions so strongly tied to the European tour operators? How can the dominant role of international tour operators be reduced? Should Turkish sector players remain dependent on them or establish more national and local charter companies for their own clients? These questions have already started growing.
Many hoteliers now wait in anticipation for Turkish Airlines (THY). Could a charter company led by THY with local companies and groups as partners be a solution? As far as we know, a few serious sector representatives in the Aegean asked Turkish Airlines long ago to use their planes for some major strategic countries so as not to lose those markets, but there has been no answer yet.
If the response is positive, this will be a real revolution for Turkish tourism investors. Charter flights by Tursem, Turkey’s largest tour operator, to almost every target country in Europe are still fresh memories. Tursem flights and agencies expanded mainly in the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries in a very short time. They had guaranteed contracts with many Aegean and Mediterranean hotels and paid high values. Unfortunately, fast growth in a very short time and a lack of support from the government were the main causes of the end of that �miracle.� It’s not easy to have such courage again, but today’s reality is that Aegean resorts need to be involved in establishing their own charter companies.
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