Visitors from the Gulf, the Arab world and China: what the Ministry's nationality tables show

Türkiye's border statistics count foreign arrivals by nationality, not people or nights. In 2025 the Ministry of Culture and Tourism recorded 921,726 arrivals from Saudi Arabia (+6.01% on 2024), 209,921 from Kuwait, 101,460 from the UAE, 50,794 from Qatar and 425,348 from China, out of 52.8 million foreign arrivals.

A revenue manager searches how many Arab tourists in Türkiye arrive each year and gets a news snippet: a number, no definition, no date, no table. The number is usually right. What it counts is usually missing. After reading this article you will know which Ministry table answers the question, what an "arrival" actually is, when each of these nationalities travels, and what to check in your own reservations before treating any of them as a market.

What do the Ministry's nationality tables actually count?#

They count foreign arrivals at Türkiye's borders, sorted by the nationality on the travel document and split by month. They do not count people, nights or spending.

The source is the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's yearly border statistics bulletin. Table 6 compares 2023 to 2025 by nationality, Table 7 splits 2025 by nationality and month, and Table C gives nationality totals back to 2010. If you want to read these tables carefully yourself, start with our guide to how to read and cite official tourism data.

An arrival is an entry event, not a person. Someone who crosses the border three times in a year appears three times, and a Turkish citizen living abroad sits in a separate citizens line rather than in the foreign total. Nationality is what the travel document says, not where the person lives or where they flew from. A Saudi passport holder resident in London is counted as Saudi, which is one reason nationality and residence give different rankings.

The same bulletin reports 52.8 million foreign arrivals for 2025, while TÜİK reports 63,917,057 departing visitors for the same year (TÜİK, Tourism Statistics 2025, 30 January 2026). One counts entries at the border, the other counts departing visitors in a survey; the two are not interchangeable.

The bulletin is marked provisional, so any figure quoted from it should carry that word and the table number. Every number quoted from the bulletin should carry the publisher, the bulletin title, the year and the table it came from. That is the minimum for a figure to survive a meeting.

How many visitors came from the Gulf and the Arab world in 2025?#

Saudi Arabia 921,726, Kuwait 209,921, the UAE 101,460 and Qatar 50,794 in 2025, with Iraq at 1,031,257 and Jordan at 281,071 also listed in the same tables.

There is no "Arab countries" group in the bulletin. If you want that number you build it yourself, and you must say which nationalities you put inside it, because the answer changes with the list. The four Gulf states in the tables are Saudi Arabia at 921,726 (+6.01% on 2024, 1.75% of all foreign arrivals), Kuwait at 209,921 (-20.62%), the UAE at 101,460 (+1.47%) and Qatar at 50,794 (-12.14%).

Under West Asia the bulletin also lists Iraq 1,031,257, Jordan 281,071, Lebanon 245,292, Bahrain 53,445 and Yemen 30,203. Under Africa it lists Algeria 343,592, Morocco 228,863, Egypt 220,911, Libya 192,126, Tunisia 160,583 and Sudan 15,416.

Syria, Oman and Palestine have no row of their own in Tables 6 and 7. Their arrivals sit inside a 358,661 "other West Asian countries" line, and Table C of the same bulletin gives the split: Syria 232,859, Oman 76,051 and Palestine 49,751, which add up to exactly 358,661.

Source: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2025 yearly border statistics bulletin, Tables 6 and 7. Provisional. A dash means the bulletin gives the count without a change figure in this extract.

Each change is 2025 against 2024. A single year's change is not a trend, and 2026 is flat: the Ministry's August 2026 bulletin puts first-half 2026 visitors at 25,758,545, 2.39% below the same period of 2025. Iran is deliberately left out of this article; it is a large market and a separate editorial decision.

When do Gulf visitors travel, and what does the monthly shape change for a hotel?#

The Saudi, Emirati and Qatari curves peak in July, Kuwait's peaks in August, and three of the four bottom out in March; Qatar's lowest month is September.

Saudi Arabia runs from 18,009 in March to 199,033 in July, then 139,686 in August. July alone accounts for 199,033 of the 921,726 Saudi arrivals in the year. Kuwait peaks later: 43,422 in August against 4,887 in March, out of 209,921 for the year.

The UAE has two humps, 16,774 in July and 16,365 in December, with 2,957 in March. Qatar peaks at 10,224 in July and falls to 1,846 in September.

What this changes operationally: contract and allotment dates, language cover at reception and in the guest app, family room and connecting room availability, and the weeks you schedule maintenance and refurbishment. The bulletin shows the shape, not the cause. School terms, the moving dates of religious holidays and summer heat are plausible explanations, but the file does not state them, so treat any explanation as a hypothesis to test against your own booking curve.

A single month can carry a market. For example, a hotel that schedules its lobby renovation for July because the domestic market is quiet may be closing the one month its Gulf business depends on.

How many Chinese visitors come to Türkiye, and when do they travel?#

425,348 arrivals from China in 2025, 3.81% more than in 2024, with a September peak of 44,814 and a February low of 22,635.

The Chinese curve is flat compared with the Gulf: monthly arrivals stay between 22,635 and 44,814 all year, so there is no single month that carries the market. The top two months are September at 44,814 and October at 44,639, which puts the volume in the autumn shoulder rather than in high summer.

425,348 is a small fraction of the 52.8 million foreign arrivals the same bulletin reports, so a percentage change here moves a modest number of people. Because the curve overlaps the European shoulder, it rarely justifies a dedicated season. It justifies preparation instead: language at the front desk, payment methods that work for the guest, and clear information before arrival.

Do not compare this count with Chinese outbound travel to other countries. No supplied source supports that comparison, and the comparison is where most published errors start.

Which gates do these visitors arrive at, and why is a gate not a destination?#

The Ministry's border file shows foreign arrivals by entry point, with İstanbul at 18,972,699 and Antalya at 16,007,580 in 2025, but an entry gate records where someone crossed, not where they slept.

İstanbul took 35.95% and Antalya 30.33% of foreign arrivals in 2025 (Ministry yearly border bulletin 2025). Those are shares of entries, not shares of nights. A traveler who lands at İstanbul airport and flies on to İzmir, Bursa or Trabzon is counted once, at İstanbul. The gate gets the arrival; the hotel in the second city gets the guest.

Searches for a city-level figure, such as Trabzon, do not have an answer in this bulletin: the tables are by nationality and month, not by province. Province-level bed capacity is published separately, but bed capacity is not arrivals. The practical substitute is your own data: the billing country on the reservation, the language the booking was made in, and the airport transfer requests you received.

Use gate figures to plan airport-side services and transfer capacity, not to size a market in a city. For the bigger picture of where Türkiye's visitors come from, see our analysis of Türkiye's 2025 source markets.

What can the nationality tables not tell you?#

They say nothing about nights, spending, accommodation type, purpose of visit or how many distinct people traveled.

No spending by nationality. TÜİK publishes tourism revenue as a national total, not split by the passport of the spender. No nights by nationality: the Ministry's accommodation bulletin reports 252,323,483 overnight stays in Ministry-certified facilities for 2025, but not how those nights divide by nationality. No accommodation type by nationality either: the file cannot tell you whether Saudi arrivals stayed in five-star resorts, boutique properties or with family.

No unique people. One person entering three times is three arrivals, so the count is always larger than the number of travelers. There is no purpose of visit in this table, and no repeat-visit marker. The consequence is simple: a sentence like "Saudi guests spend more" cannot be built from this file, and any article that builds it is using a source it has not named.

Before you treat a group as a market, what should you check in your own data?#

Check your own reservations first: the bulletin tells you who crossed the border, not who books your rooms.

Language: which languages actually appeared in the last twelve months of reservations, and whether reception, the menu and the guest app cover them. Room configuration: how many connecting and family rooms you have, and how often such a request was refused in the past year. Food and beverage: breakfast hours, and whether requests for halal or alcohol-free options were met without improvisation.

Payment: which cards and currencies your guests used, and whether your payment provider accepts them without a call to the bank. Channels: which agency or travel site each reservation came through, and whether that channel is contracted for the coming season. Stay pattern: length of stay, lead time and arrival weekday in your own reservations, rather than a national average that describes a different population.

Staffing: whether the weeks your own curve peaks match the weeks your rota peaks. The national July peak is only useful if it is also your July peak. For building the language side of this plan, see our guide to a language plan for your guest mix.

What to do next#

Pull the last twelve months of reservations, tag each one with the language it was booked in and the country on the bill, and lay the monthly counts next to the Ministry's curves for the nationalities you actually host. The tables tell you who crossed the border; only your own data tells you whether that group is a market you can serve. The next step is that comparison, not another search.