No, you weren’t just imagining your social media timelines full of all your friends posting from Istanbul and Turkey this summer. It happened to be true.
According to latest data from European Travel Commission, visitor arrivals from U.S. to Turkey for the first nine months of this year have been up 61.1 percent from equivalent 2019 numbers. It looks likely that 2022 will represent a new peak year, the latest quarterly report from ETC says.
Another hot and trendy destination for U.S. travelers was Portugal, which was also evident from the high flight and hotel/short term rental prices in Lisbon and other tourist hotspots in the country. The U.S. arrivals to Portugal are up 17.4% above the same period of 2019.
As the report says, some had feared that the war in Ukraine would deter U.S. travel to Europe owing to safety concerns for the wider European region. There is little evidence to support this notion given the range of destinations already reporting recovery, including Poland (+5.5%) and Lithuania (+6.6%).
The data also shows similar large rise of arrivals from UK to Turkey, up 27 percent year to date compared to 2019.
