ISTANBUL, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Antalya, a southern Turkish city on the Mediterranean shore, is becoming the country's shining star in tourism with surging foreign arrivals during the first nine months of this year.
Between January and September, a total of 11.4 million foreigners visited the city, marking a year-on-year increase of 28 percent, according to the data unveiled by the Antalya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism.
In contrast, Turkey as a whole hosted 27 million foreign visitors in total from January to August this year, show the figures released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
For most visitors, a holiday in Antalya generally means a vacation with sunshine, sand and sea. But Turkish tourism organizations have also diversified the city's tourism products to attract more visitors.
"We are now focusing more on congress tourism, sports tourism and age tourism to sustain the increase that we have captured during the summer months," Firuz Baglikaya, chairman of the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TURSAB), told Xinhua.
Age tourism is targeting the elderly, including organizing special tours for them.
In the 2017-2018 season, the revenues from Turkey's sports tourism hit 800 million U.S. dollars, up 30 percent year-on-year.
Baglikaya said that Antalya's share is significantly expanding, as international soccer clubs have been increasingly preferring to use the city as their training camps because of its warm climate.
In the upcoming 2018-2019 winter season, between November and April, a total of 1,500 foreign soccer players, mostly from the Balkan countries and the Commonwealth of Independent States, are expected to have their camps in Antalya, Baglikaya said.
Nezih Hacialioglu, a board member of TURSAB, said there was a general perception that tourists, especially those from Asia who mostly prefer cultural tourism to sun, sand and sea, would not come to Antalya.
As a result, a classical Anatolian cultural tour was organized, consisting of only three locations -- the central province of Konya, Pamukkale or Cotton Castle in the southwestern province of Denizli, and the Cappadocia region in the central province of Nevsehir. But Antalya was excluded.
"Antalya, however, is also a cradle of many civilizations, including the Anatolian Seljuks, Roman and Ottoman empires," Hacialioglu explained.
For him, Perge, Aspendos, Termessos, Patara, Kekova, and Demre, the hometown of Santa Claus, are just among a few ancient cities located in Antalya province that reveal the cultural links of many ancient civilizations.
"So we have added Antalya into the traditional Anatolian cultural tour as the fourth location," he said.
In Hacialioglu's view, it is necessary to extend the duration of the tour, which now generally lasts for 15 days, to lure more tourists.
"We can also create more thematic tours that would meet the appetite of tourists who are fans of cultural tourism," he added.
