How Türkiye’s tourism revenue is calculated, and where it sits in the balance of payments

TÜİK estimates Türkiye's tourism revenue from a face-to-face survey of departing visitors at border gates, supplemented by card data and a health tourism survey, and publishes it quarterly about 30 days after each quarter. The central bank's monthly balance of payments carries the same spending as travel, a services export in the current account.

A hotel finance manager and a journalist can look at the same year and quote two different tourism revenue figures, both official. The difference is not an error: they come from two publications that answer two different questions. After reading this article you will know how the number is built, why it changes after publication, where it sits in the country's external accounts, and which figure to quote for which question.

How is Türkiye's tourism revenue calculated?#

TÜİK estimates it from a face-to-face survey of departing visitors at border gates, topped up with card spending and a separate health tourism survey. It measures what visitors say they spent, not what hotels invoiced.

The frame comes from passport police records of people leaving the country. Those records define who could be sampled, and the Departing Visitors Survey then interviews a sample of them face to face at border gates. Because the estimate rests on a sample rather than a census of spending, it carries a sampling method behind it, with all that implies about precision.

Two further inputs fill gaps the survey cannot see. Card spending data from the Interbank Card Center supplements the interview answers, so spending that leaves a card trace is not lost when a visitor under-reports or cannot recall a figure. A separate Health Tourism Survey feeds the health spending part of the estimate, and it is the input that gets refreshed most often after first publication.

Publication is quarterly, about 30 days after the quarter ends, with no seasonal adjustment. A July to September figure is larger than a January to March figure by design, not because demand changed. A 2024 revision recalculated the series back to 2012, so figures published before that revision are not comparable with today's series (TÜİK, tourism statistics metadata (opens in a new tab), 2026).

No seasonal adjustment; published quarterly about 30 days after the quarter.

The practical consequence: the number is a national estimate with a sampling method behind it. No hotel can reproduce it from its own books, and no hotel's books are an input to it.

What does the revenue figure include?#

It includes what visitors spend inside Türkiye, plus a separate line for transfer passengers, and it is not the same thing as hotel revenue.

For 2025 the total was USD 65,230,749 thousand: USD 64,448,303 thousand from visitors and USD 782,446 thousand from transfer passengers (TÜİK, Tourism Statistics, Q4 and Annual 2025 (opens in a new tab), 30 Jan 2026). Visitors is TÜİK's own term and it includes citizens resident abroad. In 2025 they made up 17.5% of the 63,917,057 visitors counted (TÜİK, Tourism Statistics 2025, 30 Jan 2026).

Transfer passengers are counted on their own line because they spend in duty-free areas and airport terminals without entering the country as visitors. The figure is gross spending across accommodation, food and drink, transport, shopping and other items. It is not profit, not value added, and not a hotel's revenue line.

Spending per visitor and per night are published in TÜİK's own tables, covered in how much visitors spend in Türkiye. For what sits inside the 2025 total, see what TÜİK's 2025 tourism revenue figure includes.

Why does a published quarter change later?#

Because TÜİK revises a reference year quarter by quarter, mainly as health spending is refreshed from its Health Tourism Survey.

The mechanism is visible in the record. Second-quarter 2026 visitor revenue was first published on 31 July 2026 as USD 15,655,868 thousand and appears as USD 15,661,610 thousand in the table released with the third-quarter bulletin (TÜİK, 2026). The size of that change is small. The mechanism matters more than the size: a survey-based estimate is updated when better data arrives.

Revised cells carry a revision mark in TÜİK's tables, so a reader can see which quarters have moved since first publication. A figure quoted from an older bulletin may be a superseded version of the same number. Both are official; only one is current.

Revisions are normal in official statistics. They are not corrections of an error and they do not mean the first publication was wrong. The working rule: when you cite a quarter, cite the bulletin number and its date, and check whether a later bulletin has revised that quarter.

Where does tourism revenue sit in the balance of payments?#

In the current account, under services, as the travel item: what visitors from abroad spend in Türkiye, recorded as a credit.

TCMB compiles the balance of payments on the basis of the IMF's sixth Balance of Payments Manual (BPM6), and its metadata lists travel under the services balance of the current account. Travel credits are built mainly on TÜİK's Departing Visitors Survey, under joint work by TÜİK, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and TCMB. Other inputs are Interbank Card Center card data, health tourism survey results, and tuition fees paid by international students, collected from YÖK, the council of higher education (TCMB, balance of payments metadata (opens in a new tab), 13 Aug 2026).

Two further details shape the number. Since 2020, travel credits also include what international transfer passengers spend in Türkiye's duty-free areas on shopping, food and drink, and rest. Travel debits, what residents of Türkiye spend abroad, come from TÜİK's Citizen Entry Survey.

Timing differs from TÜİK. TCMB publishes monthly, with first results 42 to 43 days after the end of the reference period, so the monthly travel line appears before TÜİK's quarterly bulletin covering the same months. The metadata also states that, because of methodology changes made by the World Tourism Organization, the travel item differs in content from the tourism statistics TÜİK publishes.

Is tourism revenue an export?#

In the balance of payments it is: travel is a services credit, foreign money earned by selling a service to a non-resident. It is not an export in customs terms, because no goods cross a border.

Services exports are sales of services to non-residents. Travel is one line among them, alongside transport and other business services. The practical meaning: the spending arrives in foreign currency and enters the current account the way goods exports do, which is why tourism is discussed as an earner of foreign exchange.

The two figures are not interchangeable. Travel credits include tuition fees and transfer passenger duty-free spending, and the central bank's metadata says the content differs from TÜİK's tourism statistics. Do not subtract one figure from the other to produce a gap. The central bank's notes give no reconciliation, and the difference is definitional rather than a measurement error.

For a hotel, the export framing describes the country's external accounts. Your own revenue is a private number that sits somewhere inside a national estimate, and the two are not the same measurement.

Which figure should you quote, and how?#

Quote TÜİK for market size, spending per visitor and the annual total; quote the central bank's travel line for the monthly external balance. Do not mix them in one sentence.

For how large tourism is, use TÜİK's quarterly and annual bulletins, cited with the bulletin number and date. For what travel earned the country in a given month, use TCMB's monthly balance of payments, travel credits, cited with the reference month. For spending per visitor or per night, use TÜİK's own tables. Do not divide a revenue figure by a visitor count from a different publisher, because the two counts are built differently.

Never add four quarters to produce a year-to-date growth figure. TÜİK publishes quarters and an annual figure, not a running total. 2026 reads flat in the official data, so describe it that way rather than as growth, as explained in reading a flat 2026 in the official tourism data. The general rules for citing these publications are in how to read and cite official Türkiye tourism data.

Every number carries its publisher, title and date in the sentence. Public data. No endorsement implied.

What to do next#

Decide first which question you are answering, then take the number from the publication that answers it, name the bulletin and its date, and check whether a later one has revised it. The two official figures are not rivals; they are two measurements of the same spending. For the wider market frame behind these numbers, start with the Türkiye page.