Where did municipal-licensed facility data go? The coverage change in Türkiye's accommodation statistics

Since November 2022 the Ministry of Culture and Tourism publishes one accommodation series. Facilities that had municipal certificates and then obtained a Basit Konaklama (simple accommodation) certificate now sit inside the Ministry-certified figures, so a 2019 total and a 2025 total count different populations.

A consultant puts a 2019 facility figure beside a 2025 figure, both taken from the same Ministry website, and draws one continuous line between them. The line looks like growth. It is actually two different sets of facilities. After reading this you will know where the old municipal series ends, which comparisons survive the break, and how to footnote a chart that crosses it.

What changed in Türkiye's accommodation statistics in November 2022?#

The population changed, not the counting method. Facilities that had operated with municipal certificates entered the Ministry-certified series once they obtained a Basit Konaklama certificate, and the Ministry has published them there since November 2022.

Before the change the Ministry ran two separate releases: Ministry-certified accommodation statistics (Bakanlık Belgeli) and municipal-certified accommodation statistics (Belediye Belgeli). The Ministry's revision and error policy page (opens in a new tab) lists exactly two reasons for revising official statistics: a major revision caused by a change in definition, scope, classification or calculation method, and an error found after publication. This case is filed under the first.

The page's section headed "Tesis Belgelendirme ve Konaklama İstatistikleri Revizyonu" says facilities that completed certification have been published in Ministry-certified accommodation statistics since November 2022, and the same text appears in the accommodation statistics metadata. The statement is the Ministry's own, and it describes a change in population rather than a break in the series.

The practical consequence is narrow but decisive: a level taken from a 2019 bulletin and a level taken from a 2025 bulletin do not describe the same facilities. For wider context on the Ministry's data, see the Türkiye tourism data overview.

What exactly moved into the Ministry-certified series?#

Facilities that had been certified by municipalities, once they obtained a Basit Konaklama (simple accommodation) tourism operation certificate from the Ministry.

The change stems from regulatory requirements for facilities previously operating under municipal certificates to obtain a Ministry certificate. Application rules, deadlines and penalties belong with a legal adviser, not with a statistics article.

Inside the statistics, Basit-certified facilities are not hidden in a footnote: they appear as their own rows in the facility-type tables, next to İşletme (tourism operation) certified facilities. The Ministry's wording is "facilities that completed certification", which does not say every municipal-licensed facility did, so do not assume full absorption of the old population. For the certificate categories themselves, see İşletme, Yatırım and Basit certificates explained.

Why can overnight stays rise while nothing changed at the hotel?#

Because a total can grow for two different reasons: more activity inside a fixed set of facilities, or more facilities inside the total. The 2022 change is the second kind.

The mechanism is simple. A facility that reported in the municipal series in 2021 and in the Ministry series in 2023 adds its nights to the second series without adding a single guest-night to Türkiye. Any growth figure that spans the break therefore carries a hidden step.

The 2024 and 2025 yearly bulletins do cover the same kind of facility: both title their tables "İşletme ve Basit Belgeli konaklama tesisleri", both list Basit-certified types on separate rows, and the 2025 bulletin states that since 2022 the data include both certificate types. The 2025 bulletin also repeats the 2024 figures unchanged, 83,243,556 facility arrivals and 216,017,715 overnight stays, which confirms that the two years sit on one basis. So 2024 against 2025 is a fair comparison; 2021 against 2025 is not.

Figures summed from the type-table rows of the 2024 and 2025 yearly accommodation bulletins (opens in a new tab); neither bulletin states facility counts.

Within that shared scope the two parts grew at very different rates, and the certificate split is the decomposition the bulletins publish on their type-table rows. Neither bulletin states how many facilities reported in each year, so a rise in nights cannot be converted into a rise in nights per facility, and it says nothing about occupancy. Do not go beyond the bulletins when explaining the size of the movement: the split by certificate type is the published explanation, and anything else is a hypothesis that must be labelled as one.

Which comparisons stay fair across the break?#

Rates, single-certificate-group readings and any pair of years from 2022 onward stay fair. Absolute levels compared across 2022 do not.

Fair: 2024 against 2025, and later years against each other, because both bulletins cover İşletme and Basit together. Fair: one certificate group read on its own rows, where that group appears in both years. Fair with care: shares and averages computed inside a single year, because numerator and denominator come from the same population.

Unfair: a 2019 total beside a 2025 total, or a "growth since 2019" percentage built from them. Also unfair: adding a municipal-series figure to a Ministry-series figure for the same year before 2022, unless you have checked that the Ministry did not already count those facilities.

Occupancy is safer across the break than a level, but the Ministry's rate is computed inside its own population and its definition is published only in outline, so always name the population the rate covers; see what the Ministry's 2025 occupancy rate measures. And never call the certified stock "hotels": the totals include pansiyon, apart and other certified types, and a facility count is not a hotel count, as facilities, rooms and beds counted correctly explains.

Where is the old municipal series, and what does it still tell us?#

It sits where it was published: the Ministry's municipality-certified accommodation statistics page (opens in a new tab), whose two latest releases are the October 2022 monthly bulletin and the 2022 yearly bulletin.

The 2022 yearly bulletin (publication no. 2023/2) records 24,588,517 facility arrivals and 56,620,054 overnight stays in facilities certified by local administrations in 2022. The monthly tail shows a reporting channel closing, not demand collapsing: 1,946,191 arrivals in October 2022, then 330,784 in November and 298,504 in December. Read those months as the end of the series.

The series remains the only published record of municipal-certified activity up to 2022, so use it for that period only. The archive is a RAR file holding an Excel workbook and a notes document, so any automated data pipeline has to unpack it before it can read a single row. Cite it as a closed series with its publication number and year, so a later reader understands why no 2023 edition exists. For the longer view, see reading Türkiye's long tourism series without its traps.

How do you footnote a chart that crosses the break?#

Draw the break, name it, and keep the pre-2022 line visually separate from the post-2022 line.

Put a vertical marker at November 2022 with a short label: Basit Konaklama certificate holders enter the Ministry-certified series. Break the line rather than joining it, because a joined line tells the reader that one population was measured throughout. In the note, carry the Ministry statement: the revision page describes a change in population, and the same revision text appears in the accommodation statistics metadata.

State the certificate scope of every point, İşletme and Basit certified facilities, because the totals are not hotels. For feasibility work, use the post-2022 years for level and growth, and keep the municipal series as a separate historical block rather than a first segment of the same line; official tourism data in a hotel feasibility study covers the wider citation practice. Record the file you downloaded and the date you read it, since the Ministry revises and republishes its releases. Add the house line under the source: public data, no endorsement implied.

What to do next#

Open the 2024 and 2025 yearly accommodation bulletins side by side, confirm that both cover İşletme and Basit certified facilities, and mark November 2022 on your chart's axis. The break is a change in who is counted, so the honest response is not to avoid the long series but to show the reader exactly where the population changed.