The 25th EMITT – Eastern Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Fair, which is among the top five tourism fairs in the world, attracted the intense attention of thousands of local and foreign visitors on its third day. With the effect of the pandemic process, alternative holiday concepts have attracted attention.
At the fair, where attendees from around the world, guest tour operators and industry experts discussed the global and local industry agenda; 26 countries, the most important tourist attraction points in the world and nearly 70 destinations of Turkey are promoted. The show, with nearly 55 guest tour operators from 200 countries, continues at full speed. Alternative tourist routes were the focus of the third day of the show. Companies in harmony with nature, transforming with culture, adopting the awareness of responsible travel, which is the rising trend of the evening program, and providing alternatives to customers with new trends in period accommodation, the Dr It convened under the moderation of Cem Kinay. During the conference entitled “Mass Transforming Travel Manifesto: On Transportation, Accommodation and Communication Trends” in collaboration with Anatolity, Tatilsepeti General Manager Koray Küçükyılmaz, National Camping and Caravan Federation President Leyla Özdağ, Accor Hotels Turkey Vice President of Business Development Onur Kurç, CEO of Longosphere Glamping’ su Yiğit Küçükkınay participated as a speaker in the conference. Stating that the transformation accelerated by the pandemic has also caused very significant changes in travel trends, Tatilsepeti General Manager Koray Küçükyılmaz said that with this transformation, the trends that are expected to occur in the next 5 to 10 years are advanced, accelerating the entry of new products into our lives.
10 out of 1 people search for “Camp”
“We analyze the searches made by customers and their preferences in the main search engines. Today, all-inclusive hotels account for 50% of accommodation search volume. Before, it was between 80 and 90%. Now it’s 50%. Renting a house was a novelty that entered our lives. Home rentals represent 14% of the total search volume. There is a very big improvement in the facilities that provide camping services,” Küçükyılmaz shared the numbers in their vacation preferences and continued, “10% of people looking for accommodation are looking for campsites. Apart from these, we consider Bungalow as a separate status. It dominates a search share of 6%. Generation Z has influenced other generations in one way or another. The effect of the pandemic has accelerated this problem very seriously. Koray added that we will encounter a vacation industry in which those who create new experiences in tourism and lead new experiences will thrive in the years to come.
“Caravanning is the domain of helping and liberating people”
Stating that the change in tourism is noticed by everyone, National Camping and Caravan Federation President Leyla Özdağ noted that almost everyone has been talking about caravan tourism over the past 2 years, following the outreach work they have been doing as a federation for years. Özdağ continued his remarks as follows: “There is no longer a table where we do not talk about individual tourism. In addition to these curiosities of the people, we see that the tourist structures are also looking for investments related to the realization of camping areas, and as a Federation we try to help the structures. It is necessary to explain what makes caravan tourism better than other tourist areas. Özdağ pointed out that caravans are the areas where people meet nature, become nature-friendly and socialize after a stressful life in a crowded city, and pointed out that caravans are areas of helping and releasing people.
New segmentation at Accor: Lifestyle Hotel
Onur Kurç, vice president of business development at Accor Hotels Turkey, said that they frequently measure guest expectations, so travel expectations coming from different cultures encourage Accor to combine with new brands or create new ones. news. “In this sense, we have created a new category under the name of lifestyle hotel. Lifestyle hotels are an important trend. A different segment that stands out as a design. Kurç, detailing his new products with his words, “It has a different stance both in terms of food and drink culture and in terms of design”, drew attention to the old and new distinctions of guest rooms. hotel in terms of comfort. Kurç went on to say, “In the past, hotel rooms were heaven. Today, our rooms have become more comfortable and luxurious than hotel rooms. Therefore, we need to offer very different design elements and experiences in hotels. You can turn the hotel into a center of attraction for us. We need to create a new category based on customer expectations and needs and invest based on those segments. Hotel; When you make the investment, it will last 40 years, but it is an investment that must be renewed every 10 years.
Tent experience in hotel comfort
Yiğit Küçükkınay, CEO of Longosphere Glamping, said that camping is a way of life and life is organized in this way for camping enthusiasts, and said that they have built a facility that provides camping experience and creates a comfortable camping opportunity in this area: “Camping is a way of life. On the other hand, it is an action that one wishes to experience. We have built a facility where we embody this in a certain way .You are staying in a tent at this property.It is a place with AC,shower,bed,comfort,but you sleep in the trees.There is a restaurant,there is an adventure zone.We present to you this what the holiday village has to offer in a camping concept. There was no pandemic when we started designing this. In this process, the world was going to integrate with nature. The pandemic also made it In this property we offer an experience center this unlike the bungalows. We offer it in nature and in luxury tents.” During the last lecture of the third day, Ceylan Şensoy, Director of Product Marketing of TGA, gave information about the GoTürkiye platform.
Şensoy, stating that the GoTürkiye platform has strong support in promoting Turkey, said, “We ensure the promotion of geographical, cultural, historical and gastronomic values of Turkey under the GoTürkiye brand. We use various platforms while doing this branding. When we launched on January 1, 2020, we needed to gather all the information about our products, destination, country in one place. To this end, we have created the GoTürkiye platform with the latest technological infrastructure. ” noted. Finally, Şensoy said it achieved significant success and reached 93 million unique users in total.
