Airport passenger statistics: why DHMİ counts are not tourist counts

DHMİ, Türkiye's state airports authority, counts passenger traffic: everyone on board a flight arriving at or departing from a Turkish airport, except crew, on domestic and international routes. Each traveler is counted on every flight, so the figure measures movements, not people. Its January to September 2026 total of 193,079,304 is preliminary.

A new passenger total appears every month and is quickly quoted as if it were a tourism figure. The two numbers come from different publishers, count different units and are not supposed to match. After reading this you will know exactly what DHMİ counts, why one tourist appears at least twice, whether the 2026 figures are final, and how a hotel near an airport can use the monthly table without misquoting it.

What does DHMİ count as a passenger?#

DHMİ counts every person on board a flight that arrives at or departs from a Turkish airport, except flight and cabin crew, on both domestic and international routes. DHMİ, the state airports authority (Devlet Hava Meydanları İşletmesi Genel Müdürlüğü), publishes a monthly traffic table for each airport it operates and for the country as a whole. Its metadata defines passenger traffic as everyone on board arriving at or departing from an airport, crew excluded, on domestic and international flights (DHMİ, airport statistics metadata, 2026).

Arrivals and departures are separate entries: the table counts directions, not journeys. Domestic passengers sit inside the same total, so a resident flying within Türkiye is counted exactly like a foreign visitor. Direct transit, a passenger who stays on the same aircraft through the airport, is excluded from the comparative file. The current year is published as preliminary; the comparison year is settled. The latest cumulative file covers January to September 2026: 193,079,304 passengers, of whom 81,709,700 were on domestic and 111,369,604 on international flights (DHMİ, comparative airport statistics, September 2026).

Why is one tourist counted at least twice?#

Because the count has two directions and no identity: the same person is recorded on the flight in and again on the flight out, and nothing in the file links the two records. A return trip produces at least two movements, one on arrival and one on departure. A domestic feeder leg at either end adds two more, because domestic flights are inside the same total.

A return trip is two movements#

The file holds no name, passport or booking reference, so there is no deduplication between an arrival and a later departure. Group travel multiplies the effect: a family of four on a return trip is eight movements. The total therefore measures airport workload and air capacity, not the number of people who came.

A connection adds two more#

A connection at a hub adds one movement per flight changed, because each flight's passengers are counted. Dividing the total by two to estimate visitors fails, because it ignores domestic legs, connections, residents and repeat trips inside the same year.

Are the 2026 DHMİ figures final?#

No. DHMİ marks the current year's cumulative file as not final (kesin olmayan), so the numbers can still be revised. The September 2026 file compares 193,079,304 for 2026 with 187,370,316 for the same months of 2025; the earlier column is settled, the current one is not (DHMİ, comparative airport statistics, September 2026).

Late airline submissions and corrections can move a preliminary month, so a small change between two releases may be a revision rather than a change in demand. Cite three things together: the period, the not-final label and the date you fetched the file, so a later revision does not make your sentence wrong. Do not splice a preliminary month onto a final series without saying which months are which. The next release, October 2026, is scheduled for 13 November 2026 (DHMİ, comparative airport statistics, September 2026).

For the longer view of how these series behave over years, see reading a long tourism series without its traps.

Do more international passengers mean more tourists?#

No. International passenger growth is an early signal about air capacity and travel activity, not a count of visitors, and the two can move in different directions. The count includes Turkish citizens resident abroad, business travelers, same-day visitors and people traveling for family, study or health reasons. It excludes everyone who arrives by road, rail or sea, which is a large share of arrivals at some borders. It counts a connecting traveler twice, while visitor statistics count a person once.

The series can diverge from tourism. DHMİ's international passengers for January to September 2026 were up 0.53% (DHMİ, comparative airport statistics, September 2026), while Türkiye's visitor numbers are flat: 25,758,545 visitors in the first half of 2026, down 2.39% (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, border statistics, August 2026).

What the passenger series can hint at: whether an airport is gaining or losing flights, how a season is shaping up, whether capacity is being added. What it cannot show: nationality mix, length of stay or spend per visitor. No published ratio converts passengers into visitors, so do not invent one. For the wider picture, see reading a flat 2026 in the official tourism data.

How do DHMİ counts differ from the Ministry's visitor numbers?#

They answer different questions from different publishers: DHMİ counts passenger movements through airports, while the Ministry of Culture and Tourism counts people crossing borders. The two will not match and are not meant to; a gap is not an error in either file.

Where the figures appear in your own report, add the line "Public data. No endorsement implied." For the mechanics of the border series, see how Türkiye counts its tourists: the border statistics explained and total visitors or foreign visitors: which number you are quoting.

How can a hotel near an airport use the monthly table?#

Use it as context for staffing and arrival patterns, and keep your own records as the authority on your hotel. Read the airport that actually feeds you, not the national total; a nearby point-to-point airport says more about your arrivals than a distant hub. Compare the same month across years rather than consecutive months, because seasonality dominates the series.

Watch direction: departing passengers from your source market in shoulder months hint at outbound capacity heading your way later. Match peak days against your own pickup and no-show records; if your arrivals trail the airport peak by two days, roster for your peak, not the airport's. Use the table for rosters, shuttle planning and supplier conversations, not for pricing or demand forecasts. Never present an airport figure to an owner as expected room demand; show your own booking pace beside it.

What to do next#

Download the September 2026 file once from the DHMİ statistics page (opens in a new tab), note its period and its not-final label, and keep a one-page log beside your own pickup numbers; from then on the passenger table is context you can defend rather than a tourism figure you repeat. The chain is simple: know what is counted, know who is counted twice, know the file is preliminary, and only then decide whether it says anything about your rooms. For the wider picture of how Türkiye's tourism data fits together, see ai-otel.com/turkiye.