Steve Heapy, CEO of jet2.com and jet2holidays, met with Antalya tourism professionals to evaluate the 2024 tourism season.

The meeting where the 2024 season was evaluated took place at Regnum Carya in Belek, one of the important tourism centers of Antalya. The meeting was attended by senior executives of MTS Globe Türkiye and jet2holidays, hotel business partners who contribute to the development of tourism in the region, as well as representatives of official institutions and organizations.

Explaining that jet2.com is the third largest airline in the UK, while jet2holidays is the largest tour operator, Steve Heapy said, “We serve more than 650 resorts, more than 70 overseas destinations and more than 500 routes from 12 cities in the UK to 22 countries. Our growth curve has continued since 2019. Not counting the 2 years with the pandemic, we have achieved 35% growth since 2019.”

“WE GET THE MOST RESERVATIONS TO TURKIYE”

Underlining that Türkiye is a strategic destination for Jet2, Heapy said, “We have an unrivaled track record of investment and growth in Türkiye. We are constantly investing in new destinations and products. We offer over 540 hotels in Türkiye, including 39 beach resorts, 56 full package villas, 14 hotels in our luxury package Indulgent Escape, 8 hotels in our VIBE package designed for the growing millennial market, 48 hotels for families, 29 hotels for adults and 18 golf hotels. Among the Mediterranean destinations including Cyprus and Greece, we receive the most bookings to Türkiye. We are increasing our work in Türkiye year by year. We are trying to create new services that we can offer to our guests. We want more hotels, we want more rooms in hotels. I hope that next year we will bring more than one million people to our hotels in Türkiye, and we will do that by making sure that we have the right hotels and the right rooms in the right hotels.”

“WHEN YOU WORK WITH TURKEY YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR”

Heapy confirmed that inflation in Türkiye is driving up costs and, in turn, hotel prices, saying, “This means that Türkiye’s competitive advantage over other countries is getting smaller and smaller every year and the gap is closing. Despite this, Türkiye is still getting good bookings and tourists because the hotels are great. The space is big, there are lots of things to do on the premises. The staff are great, guest satisfaction is high. You get value for money when you work with Türkiye. People like the weather here, they like shopping, they like the culture. But the costs are increasing not only the price of the hotel but also the cost of employing staff. Hotels will either have fewer staff or personnel costs will be covered even if they are high. A lot of attention should be paid to prevent this situation from affecting the quality of the hotel and guest satisfaction.”

84 FLIGHTS A WEEK TO ANTALYA

Noting that interest from the UK in Antalya continues to grow, Heapy said, “Many hotels in Antalya have a great ‘all-inclusive’ system. The capacity we have built for Antalya has grown by 15% in both winter and summer seasons. In the 2025 season, we will operate 84 weekly flights to Antalya from 12 UK destinations. We will increase this number to 13 by adding Bournemouth at the beginning of the season. Our planned arrival capacity for the 2025 Summer season is 458 thousand. As you know, the winter season is an important period of tourism. In this season, we will operate 35 weekly flights to Antalya with a capacity of 116 thousand seats. All of the flights until February are already booked. This is a great success for the winter season.”