Türkiye occupancy rate 2025: what the Ministry's figure measures

In 2025 the occupancy rate in Ministry-certified (İşletme and Basit) facilities was 49.54%, down from 51.91% in 2024, per the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The metadata defines the measure as the use of available bed capacity over the month; no formula and no room-based rate are published.

A general manager opens the Ministry's accommodation bulletin, finds one occupancy rate for the whole country, and is asked in the next board meeting why the property is above or below it. The honest answer starts with the label on the number, not the number. After reading this article you will be able to quote the Türkiye occupancy rate correctly, read the class breakdown inside it, and run a like-for-like comparison against your own property.

What is the Türkiye occupancy rate for 2025?#

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism reports an occupancy rate in Ministry-certified (İşletme and Basit) facilities of 49.54% for 2025, against 51.91% in 2024.

The label is part of the number. Drop it and the figure stops describing anything: the population is Ministry-certified operating (İşletme) and simple accommodation (Basit) facilities, not every bed in the country. İşletme belgeli means a facility holding an operating certificate; Basit Konaklama is the simple accommodation certificate introduced for facilities that had operated with municipal licences. Investment-certified (Yatırım belgeli) facilities that are not yet operating sit outside this rate. If you need the certificate types in more detail, see İşletme, Yatırım and Basit certificates explained.

The same percentage covers five-star hotels, four- and three-star hotels, boutique facilities, pensions and apart facilities. It is not a hotel figure, and the bulletin publishes no hotel-only and no room-based rate. The Ministry prints 2024 and 2025 side by side; the file gives no reason for the movement between them, and this article offers none.

In an investment memo, put the class line for your own segment next to the total, not instead of it.

For the wider discipline of quoting official figures, see how to read and cite official tourism data.

What does the Ministry's occupancy rate actually measure?#

Its metadata describes the occupancy rate as the extent to which the bed capacity offered was used over the month. No formula, and no room-based equivalent, is published, according to the Ministry's metadata for certified accommodation statistics (opens in a new tab) (last updated 23.12.2024).

Three definitions carry the whole file. A facility arrival is an entry to a certified facility in order to stay overnight, and it is not person-based, so a guest who moves between two certified facilities counts twice. An overnight stay is a night a guest spends in a certified facility. Average length of stay is overnight stays divided by facility arrivals.

The occupancy definition is bed-capacity based and monthly. The metadata does not say how extra beds, rooms taken out of service or months when a facility is closed are treated. Part of the total is an estimate: facilities enter each month's data between the 1st and the 10th of the following month, and the Ministry estimates figures for facilities that do not report by applying the occupancy rate of comparable facilities grouped by province, district and bed-size band. The monthly bulletin appears about 37 days after the reference month ends.

The practical consequence: you cannot reproduce the published rate from the arrivals and overnight stays in the same file, and you should not convert it into rooms. Treat it as what it says it is, a use of bed capacity. Do not add the word provisional or the word final; the metadata gives no revision calendar and the bulletin carries no such note.

How different are the classes inside the national figure?#

Very different: in 2025 the class rates run from 61.0% for five-star hotels to 35.1% for pensions, so the national total describes none of them well.

Read the class line before the total. A 61.0% five-star hotel and a 35.1% pension are in the same percentage, and the average of two such different businesses is not a benchmark for either. Boutique facilities (42.3%) and three-star hotels (42.1%) sit almost on top of each other, which is a useful reminder that class alone does not explain performance.

The Ministry does not publish how the classes are combined into the total, so do not reconstruct the weighting or present a rebuilt figure as official. Use the class line for your own facility type, and the provincial line where it is published, before you look at the national number at all. If your facility carries more than one label, say which line you are comparing with and why.

Source: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, certified accommodation statistics, 2025. Public data. No endorsement implied.

What do the arrivals and overnight stays behind the figure say?#

In 2025 Ministry-certified facilities recorded 98,981,217 arrivals and 252,323,483 overnight stays, which is 2.55 nights per facility arrival.

The overnight stays split into 154.8 million foreign and 97.5 million domestic. Domestic demand is a large part of the base, so a property that only studies foreign guests is reading the file with one eye closed. The 2.55 figure is overnight stays divided by facility arrivals, exactly as the metadata defines average length of stay; it is not the length of a person's trip.

TÜİK's table gives 10.66 nights average per departing visitor for 2025, with average spending of USD 1,008 per departing visitor (TÜİK, Tourism Statistics 2025, 30 January 2026). Different unit: a visitor, not an entry. The gap between 2.55 and 10.66 is mechanical. A traveler who stays in three certified facilities on one trip produces three facility arrivals and one departing visitor.

Never put the two in the same sentence or the same chart without naming the unit. Say "per facility arrival" or "per departing visitor" every time. If you are quoting visitor totals rather than facility entries, check which population the number covers before you compare it with anything; see total visitors or foreign visitors: which number you are quoting.

Why does an annual figure hide a seasonal business?#

Because it adds twelve months of very different use into one number, while the Ministry's own definition works month by month.

A coastal facility can run near capacity in August and near empty in January. The annual rate is the sum of those months, not a typical month and not a target. For example, and this is a hypothetical illustration rather than a Ministry figure: a 100-bed facility with 90 beds in use across a 30-day month records 2,700 bed-nights against 3,000 available; the same facility with 20 beds in use records 600. Neither month tells you the year, and the year tells you neither month.

Use the monthly bulletins for seasonality. They appear about 37 days after the reference month ends, which is fast enough to be useful in a revenue meeting. Read the annual figure as a description of how the year's capacity was used, and keep your own month-by-month series beside it. Do not carry the 2025 figure forward as an expectation for 2026; it describes one year's use of capacity.

A rate above 100% appears in the Ministry's own tables. In the August 2026 monthly bulletin (opens in a new tab) (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 06.10.2026), golf facilities show 109.87% and first-class holiday villages 102.18%, while five-star hotels show 91.89%. The Ministry gives no explanation and this article offers none.

How do you compare your own rate like for like?#

Define your own measure, hold the period and the class fixed, and compare with your own history before you compare with anyone else.

Choose rooms sold over rooms available, or bed-nights sold over bed-nights available. Both are legitimate; the mistake is switching between them without saying so. Write down how you treat rooms taken out of service, complimentary stays, house use and months when part of the property was closed. A rate whose exclusions change between reports is not comparable with itself.

Match the period: a month against the same month last year, a year against a year, never a single month against an annual figure. Match the population: if you use the Ministry figure at all, use the class line for your facility type and the provincial line where published, not the national total. Compare with your own history first; three years of the same month tells a revenue manager more than any national average. If you report revenue per available room or average daily rate next to occupancy, keep all three on the same room base, or the ratios will contradict each other. The formulas and their common mistakes are covered in RevPAR, ADR and occupancy rate: formulas and common mistakes.

What to do next#

Open the Ministry's 2025 accommodation bulletin, copy the full label with its publisher and date, and put your own three-year month-by-month series beside it. The national figure tells you how certified bed capacity was used across a year; only your own defined, consistently measured series tells you how your property is doing.