The 25th EMITT – Eastern Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Fair, which is among the five largest tourism fairs in the world, became the focus of intense attention of thousands of local and foreign visitors on its third day. With the effect of the pandemic process, alternative holiday concepts attracted attention.
At the Fair, where participants from all over the world, invited tour operators and industry experts discussed the global and local agenda of the industry; 26 countries, the world's most important tourist attraction points and nearly 70 destinations from Turkey are being promoted. The fair, with nearly 55 invited tour operators from 200 countries, continues at full speed. Alternative tourism routes became the focus on the third day of the fair. Businesses that are in harmony with nature, transforming with culture, adopting the awareness of responsible travel, which is the rising trend in the evening program, and offering alternatives to customers with the new period accommodation trends, Dr. It came together under the moderation of Cem Kinay. At the conference titled “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 took part as a speaker at the conference. Stating that the transformation accelerated by the pandemic has also caused very important changes in travel trends, Tatilsepeti General Manager Koray Küçükyılmaz said that with this transformation, the trends that are expected to take place in the next 5 to 10 years are brought forward, thereby accelerating the entry of new products into our lives.
10 in 1 People are after "Camp"
“We analyze the searches made by the guests and their preferences in the major search engines. Today, all-inclusive hotels account for 50 percent of the accommodation search volume. It used to be between 80 and 90 percent. Now it's at 50 percent. Renting a house has been a novelty that has entered our lives. Home rentals account for 14 percent of the total search volume. There is a really big improvement in the facilities that offer camping services,” Küçükyılmaz shared the numbers in their holiday preferences and continued as follows: “10 percent of individuals who search for accommodation search about campsites. Apart from these, we see Bungalow as a separate status. It dominates a 6 percent search share. Generation Z has influenced other generations in some way. The effect of the pandemic has accelerated this issue very seriously.” Koray added that we will encounter a holiday sector in which those who create new experiences in tourism and lead new experiences will grow in the coming years.
“Caravanning is the area of helping and liberating people”
Stating that the change in tourism is noticed by everyone, the President of the National Camping and Caravan Federation Leyla Özdağ noted that almost everyone has been talking about caravan tourism in the last 2 years, following the awareness work they have been doing as a federation for years. Özdağ continued his words as follows: “There is no longer a table where individual tourism is not discussed. In addition to these curiosities of people, we see that tourism facilities are also researching investments related to making camping areas, and as the Federation, we try to help the facilities. It is necessary to explain what makes caravan tourism better than other tourism areas.” Özdağ pointed out that caravans are the areas where people meet with nature, become nature-friendly and socialize after a stressful life in a crowded city, and underlined that caravans are areas of helping and liberating people.
New Segmentation from Accor: Lifestyle Hotel
Onur Kurç, Vice President of Business Development at Accor Hotels Turkey, stated that they measure customer expectations frequently, so that travel expectations originating from different cultures encourage Accor to combine with new brands or to create new ones. “In this sense, we 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 position both in terms of food and beverage culture and in terms of design," drew attention to the old and new distinctions of hotel rooms in terms of comfort. Kurç continued his words as follows: “In the past, hotel rooms were heaven. Now, our bedrooms 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 according to customer expectations and needs and make investments according to those segments. Hotel; When you make the investment, it will last for 40 years, but it is an investment that you need to renew every 10 years.”
Tent experience in hotel comfort
Yiğit Küçükkınay, CEO of Longosphere Glamping, stated that camping is a lifestyle and that life is organized in this direction for camp lovers, and stated that they have built a facility that provides a camping experience and creates a comfortable camping opportunity in this area: “Camping is a lifestyle. On the other hand, it is an action that is desired to be experienced. We built a facility where we embodied this in a way. You stay in a tent at this property. It is a place with air conditioning, shower, bed, comfort, but you sleep in the trees. There is a restaurant, there is an adventure area. We present 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 has also accelerated it. In this property, we offer an experience center unlike Bungalows. We offer it in nature and in luxury tents.” In the last conference of the third day, TGA Product Marketing Director Ceylan Şensoy gave information about the GoTürkiye platform.
Şensoy, stating that the GoTürkiye platform has an important support in the promotion of Turkey, said, “We ensure the branding of Turkey's geographical, cultural, historical and gastronomic values under the GoTürkiye brand. We use various platforms while doing this branding. When we set out on January 1, 2020, we had to collect all the information about our products, destination, country in one place. For this purpose, we created the GoTürkiye platform with the latest technology infrastructure.” said. Finally, Şensoy stated that they achieved a significant success and reached 93 million unique users in total.
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