Province-level tourism data in Türkiye: what exists and how to read it

Province-level tourism data in Türkiye means the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's statistics broken down by province. Three series answer a provincial tourist question: foreign entries at the province's border gates, arrivals and nights at certified accommodation in the province, and provincial directorate reports built from both. Each counts something different; none is a count of tourists in the province.

A hotelier in Antalya opens three official documents and finds three different numbers for the same year. All three are correct. They answer three different questions, and the first job is to know which one you are asking. After reading this guide you will be able to name the three series, say in plain words what each counts, cite a provincial figure so that no reader is misled, and compare your own hotel's months with your province without turning one number into a headline.

How many tourists came to Antalya? Three official answers, three definitions#

At least three official series answer a provincial tourist question, and each counts something different: foreign entries at the province's border gates, arrivals and nights at certified facilities in the province, and provincial directorate reports built from the first two.

The border series counts foreign visitors once per entry and groups them by the province the gate belongs to, so it measures entry, not stay. The accommodation series counts arrivals and overnight stays at operation-certified (İşletme) and simple-accommodation (Basit Konaklama) facilities in the province, with foreign and domestic guests shown separately. Provincial directorate reports restate the Ministry's border, accommodation and facility figures for one province in a single monthly document, with a commentary layer on top.

None of the three is a count of people in the province on a given night. One is entries, one is stays at certified facilities, one is a repackaging of both.

The practical rule: name the series before you quote a number. A provincial number without its series is not citable, and two numbers from different series cannot be subtracted from each other. The same rule holds in reverse: when someone quotes a provincial figure at you, your first question is which of the three documents it came from.

What do the border-gate figures by province actually count?#

They count foreign visitors once, at the gate they crossed, grouped by the province that gate belongs to. They show where people entered, not where they stayed.

For 2025 the Ministry's yearly border bulletin (opens in a new tab) records 52,775,055 foreign visitors; gates in İstanbul province took 18,972,699 of them (35.95%) and gates in Antalya province 16,007,580 (30.33%). The table groups entries by the province each gate belongs to, so a visitor who lands in İstanbul and travels to Antalya appears in İstanbul's figure only.

The series covers foreign visitors. Domestic travel does not appear in it at all, which is one reason a gate figure is usually smaller than a facility figure for the same province.

A single month can reorder the provinces. In the provisional September 2026 bulletin, 6,111,821 foreign visitors arrived nationally and gates in Antalya province took the largest share of entries that month at 35.88%, while over January to September 2026 gates in İstanbul province led with 35.12% against Antalya's 30.47% (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, border statistics September 2026 bulletin). That reordering is seasonality and routing, not a change of destination: read the year-to-date line when you want the steadier picture, and label the monthly bulletin provisional.

Why the monthly share and the yearly share disagree#

Monthly shares move with the flight schedules and holiday calendars of that month; yearly shares average them out. Neither is wrong. Never turn a share of entries into a share of a province's visitors, beds, nights or revenue. The share describes one gate system against another, nothing more.

For a fuller explanation of how the border series is built, see How Türkiye counts its tourists: the border statistics explained.

What do certified-facility figures by province measure?#

They measure arrivals, overnight stays, average length of stay and occupancy at Ministry-certified accommodation in each province, with foreign and domestic guests counted separately.

For 2025 the accommodation bulletin (opens in a new tab) gives Antalya 30,763,631 arrivals, 111,340,634 overnight stays and 66.31% occupancy; İstanbul 18,095,346 arrivals, 40,105,289 nights and 53.50%; Muğla 9,129,867 arrivals, 24,669,490 nights and 49.99%; the national total is 98,981,217 arrivals, 252,323,483 nights and 49.54% (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, certified accommodation statistics yearly bulletin 2025).

Coverage is operation-certified and simple-accommodation facilities. That is not every bed in the province, and certified facilities are not all hotels: the totals mix hotels, pensions, apart and boutique operations. The main table is by province and district, split into foreign and domestic guests, and there are separate sheets by facility type and class for Ankara, Antalya, Aydın, İstanbul, İzmir and Muğla. Those sheets are the only way to compare within a class rather than against a provincial average.

Arrivals count stays, not people. A guest who spends three nights in one certified facility is one arrival and three overnights; a guest who moves between two certified facilities is two arrivals. The bulletin publishes an occupancy rate column and does not state the formula behind it. Read in plain words, it measures the use of available bed capacity across all certified facilities, so it is not a room occupancy and must never be called hotel occupancy.

Capacity context, from the provisional September 2026 facility stock (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, September 2026 certified accommodation facility statistics): Antalya 657,807 beds, İstanbul 271,148, Muğla 243,129, İzmir 94,596 and Aydın 58,228, against 1,939,248 beds nationally in 928,427 rooms and 21,490 facilities. Operation-certified facilities alone hold 1,264,786 beds nationally, 527,042 of them in Antalya.

For what the certification categories mean, see Certified accommodation in Türkiye: İşletme, Yatırım and Basit.

What do provincial directorate reports add?#

They restate the Ministry's own border, accommodation and facility figures for one province in a single monthly document, with the directorate's commentary on top.

The İstanbul Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism publishes a monthly tourism statistics report as a PDF and a Word file, prepared by its strategy development branch from the Ministry's border, accommodation and facility statistics. Its report page (opens in a new tab) lists yearly pages from 2010 to 2026, with no 2014 page, and the 2026 page lists reports for January to September 2026. The September 2026 report states that 1,905,497 foreign visitors entered through İstanbul's border gates that month, 6.41% more than in September 2025 (İstanbul Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, tourism statistics report, September 2026). That is the same underlying border series as the national bulletin, cut for one province and one month.

What these reports add is convenience and continuity: one document, a province-level narrative, and often a longer back series than a single national table gives you. What they do not add is a new definition. If a provincial report and the national bulletin appear to disagree, check the month, the definition and the table before assuming an error, then cite the primary Ministry table.

Treat the directorate as a publisher of Ministry data, not as a second source. Where a report quotes a figure, follow it back to the Ministry table and cite that table with its sheet name and period.

A worked reading for one province, step by step#

Read the three series side by side, never add them, and never present one as the answer to another's question.

Take the question as it is usually asked: how many tourists came to Antalya in 2025. The honest answer is that the question has three answers and the asker has to choose.

Gate answer: 16,007,580 foreign visitors entered through border gates in Antalya province in 2025, 30.33% of the national total (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, border statistics yearly bulletin 2025). Facility answer: certified facilities in Antalya recorded 30,763,631 arrivals and 111,340,634 overnight stays in 2025, foreign and domestic guests together (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, certified accommodation statistics yearly bulletin 2025).

Why the facility number is larger, and why that is not a contradiction: it includes domestic guests, it counts every stay rather than every entry, and it does not care how the guest arrived. The gate number counts foreign visitors once per entry and does not care where they slept.

Occupancy answer: 66.31% across certified facilities in Antalya in 2025, against 49.54% nationally, on a bed-capacity definition. Capacity context for the same province is 657,807 beds in the provisional September 2026 facility stock.

What you must not do with these numbers: subtract one from the other, add them, or describe the gap as missing or unrecorded tourists. The gap is a difference of definition, and it is fully explained by the definitions.

One sentence you can publish#

How do you cite a provincial figure without misleading your reader?#

Give the series, the publisher, the table and the period in the same sentence, and say in plain words what the number counts.

Five parts make a citation: publisher, title of the publication, table or sheet name, period, and a plain-words definition of what is counted. State the status of the data. The September 2026 border bulletin and the September 2026 facility stock are marked provisional; the 2025 yearly bulletins are cited as yearly bulletins, with no provisional label added by you.

Never cite a re-publication when the Ministry table is available. Associations and news outlets re-publish these figures; the table is the source. Never carry a number across definitions. A share of border entries is not a market share; a bed-capacity occupancy is not a room occupancy; arrivals are not people.

Do not build your own annual total by adding monthly provincial figures. The yearly bulletin already publishes the annual figure, and the monthly and yearly publications are separate documents, so cite the yearly table for the year and the monthly table for the month. When you publish public data, add the editorial line: Public data. No endorsement implied.

For the general rules behind these examples, see Türkiye tourism statistics: how to read and cite official data.

How does a hotel compare its own months with its province?#

Compare the same month of the same year, on a definition you can match, and treat your own history as the baseline.

Match the period first. A province figure for January says nothing about your August, and a year-to-date provincial line cannot be set against one of your months. Match the definition second. Your occupancy is rooms sold over rooms available; the Ministry's is use of bed capacity across all certified facilities. They are different ratios and one cannot be subtracted from the other.

Match the population third. The province figure includes every certified facility, from five-star hotels to small pensions. A provincial average can hide a segment that behaves nothing like your property. Where a type and class sheet exists for your province (Ankara, Antalya, Aydın, İstanbul, İzmir and Muğla), compare within your class rather than against the provincial average.

Read your own year-on-year change first, then place it beside the province's same-month change. The province is context, not a target, and a gap between your number and the province's is a question to investigate, not a verdict. Note what the province figure cannot see: your channel mix, your length of stay, your rate, your guest nationality mix. Those are the reasons your month can move while the province's does not.

If you publish the comparison, label your own figures as yours and the Ministry's as the Ministry's, with the month and the definition attached to each. For how the national occupancy figure is built, see Türkiye occupancy rate 2025: what the Ministry's figure measures.

What to do next#

Decide which question you are actually asking, then pick the one series that answers it: border gates for how visitors arrived, certified accommodation for how many stays and nights the province recorded, a provincial directorate report for a single-document view of the same Ministry tables. Write the citation sentence with the publisher, table, period and definition attached, and keep the three numbers side by side instead of combining them. The next step is small and concrete: take your own province, open the 2025 accommodation bulletin and the 2025 border bulletin, and write one sourced sentence for each before you quote either in a report.