Number of Russian Tourists in Antalya Drops Over Five Times in January

The number of Russian tourists visiting the Turkish resort city of Antalya dropped 5.3 times in January, comparing to the same period in 2015, the statistics issued by the tourism and culture department of Antalya revealed.

ANKARA (Sputnik) — According to the data revealed Sunday, 2,427 Russians visited Antalya between January 1 and 31, while 12,870 holidaymakers from Russia made it to the resort in January 2015.

The overall number of tourist in Antalya dropped by 17 percent for the first month of 2016, a record low in the past 10 years, the statistics showed. The number of German tourists decreased by 16 percent, of Italians by 45 percent, of visitors from Sweden and Belgium by 30 percent.

Tourism in Turkey has been struggling due to Turkish security situation amid Daesh and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) violence.

The Turkish tourism situation continued deteriorating after Russian banned organized travel of its tourist groups to the republic after November's incident with Turkey downing a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft over alleged airspace violation.