Exploratory Data Analysis of Turkey’s Tourism Statistics in R
About the Dataset
The Turkey’s tourism statistics dataset is retreived from EVDS (Electronic Data Delivery System) . There are 3 different tables in this dataset that shows,
- travel incomes and expenses of tourists,
- distribution of arriving foreign visitors according to cities to which border gates are bound,
- their nationalities.
These tables contain data for the years 2008–2021.
Tourists by Nationalities
The nationalities of the tourists who visited Turkey between January 2008 and September 2021 are shown. In the Tourist by nationality table, the dates in the rows and the countries in the columns are specified. The table shows how many tourists came from which country in terms of dates.
Since this state of the data does not allow easy processing, it has been converted to the following figure with the “melt” function.
Distribution of Tourists by Border Gates
Dataset showing the distribution of foreign tourists visited Turkey between 2008 and 2021 according to the customs gates. In the table distribution of tourists by border gates, there are dates in the rows and cities in the columns. The data in the table are affected by air, road, sea and railway routes. The table shows how many tourists came to which city on the basis of date.
Travel Incomes and Expenses
Dataset showing Turkey’s tourism revenues and expenses between 2008 and 2021.
Results of Analysis
The purpose of this analysis is to make inferences about tourism in Turkey and to display these findings with charts and graphs by visualizing them.
The Total Numbers Of The Tourist Based On Continentals
This graph represents the rate of tourists coming to Turkey between 2008 and 2021 by continents. When we look at the graph, we see that one of the continents with the least tourists is Australia, which may be due to the high time difference and the few direct flights. In addition, we can attribute the reason why the highest number of tourists come from Europe, to its proximity and to the fact that it is in a worse economic situation than Europe.
Distribution By Countries
In this world map, we showed the distribution of the total number of tourists visited Turkey between 2008 and 2021 by country. When you place the mouse on the country, the total number of visitors can be seen related to that country. As a color, the darker the green means that tourists arrived from that country most. As it can be easily understood from the map, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom are the top 3 countries where the most tourists came to Turkey in this period. 21 million visitors arrived to Turkey from our border neighbor Iran during this period. 23 million visitors from Bulgaria which is another border neighbor of our country, visited Turkey during this period. We know that the population of the world is approximately 8 billion and almost 1/3 of this number lives only in China and India. As can be seen from the map, only 3.5 million people had visited Turkey from these two countries during this period. Doing marketing activities for these countries and participating in tourism fairs held in these countries can attract more Chinese and Indian tourists to our country.
Total Visitors of Europe Continent by year
In the European region, tourists come mostly from Germany and Russia. The high number of Turks living in Germany may be one of the most important effects of this. There appears to be a decrease in the number of visitors from Russia in 2016. It can be understood from the graph that events such as terrorist activities, coup attempts, and shooting Russian warplane in our country in 2015 and 2016 caused a significant decrease.
Total Visitors of Asia Continent by year
Visitors from the Asian region mostly come from Iran. Because of the regime in Iran and Turkey’s proximity to Iran, Turkey attracts a lot of Iranian tourists and immigrants. Also, many people come to Turkey from Iran for shopping. It is seen that many immigrants came to Turkey in 2010 and 2011 due to the political events in Syria. Then the decrease in this number does not make sense. The reason for this may be Syrians who came unregistered. In addition, in general, the number of tourists coming from countries with low incomes in the Asian continent is quite low. Until 2020, the number of tourists from Kazakhstan is increasing. The reason for this increase can be interpreted as Kazakhstanis generally coming to Turkey to work.
Total Visitors of America Continent by year
We see that the number of incoming tourists has increased until 2016. After the coup attempt in Turkey in 2015, we see that there has been a decrease and cannot reach the previous years levels.
Compared to other countries in this continent, the USA and Canada are among the countries that visit Turkey the most. We can say that the visits of the Turkish population in America and the desire of the American people to see different places lead to this situation.
Total Visitors of Africa Continent by year
Due to the Arab Spring events that started in the North African region in 2010, the number of visitors increased in the following years. Turkey is one of the countries that easily accepts shelter nearby. The low number of tourists from South Africa can be interpreted as low income.
Total Visitors of Australia Continent by year
The reason for the decrease in the number of visitors in this region after 2015 can be interpreted as the coup attempt in Turkey. At the same time, there was an extra decrease due to the closing of borders during the covid-19 period. The reason why there are no tourists from New Zealand in general may be that there are few direct flights and it takes too long to arrive with connecting flights.
The Top 10 Cities With The Most Tourists
This treemap chart represents the 10 cities that attract the most tourists in Turkey. Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are big cities and it can be predicted that tourists come for both vacation and business. Muğla, Antalya and Aydın are the places where more people come to spend their summer holidays. Due to the presence of border gates, Kırklareli, Edirne, Artvin and Ağrı are also cities that attract a lot of foreign tourists due to road crossings.
The Border Gates Of The Top 3 Cities
It can be understood from the graph that events such as terrorist activities, coup attempt and shooting Russian warplane in our country in 2015 and 2016 caused a significant decrease in the number of tourists visiting our country.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this article.
