KEMER (Turkey), May 15 (Itar-Tass) — Russia’s consulate general in Antalya gets over 100 applications per day from Russian tourists vacating in Turkey in summer months, consul general Alexander Tolstopyatenko told reporters after a meeting on safety of Russian citizens in Turkey.
The meeting took place in Kemer within the framework of the Russian-Turkish tourism group.
“In the tourist season that begins for Russians from April 1 we get over 100 applications from tourists per day, of them only 20 are in the sphere of our competence and require the consulate’s real interference and assistance,” he said. “The rest are tourists’ complaints over untimely transfers and accommodation issues.”
The consul added “in the low season the consulate gets around 35-40 applications from Russian tourists, most of them concern problems with documents and tragic accidents, road accidents n particular.”
Tolstopyatenko expressed the hope that “offices of the Russian federal tourism agency in Turkey and Egypt will open in the near future and will be able to resolve those issues that are not in the consulate’s competence.”
Nevertheless, “during a vacation season the number of the consulate general’s staff was increased to make work faster and more well-coordinated,” he said.
The envoy recalled that “under the Turkish government’s decree from May 4 to December 31 the visaless stay for Russian citizens in Turkey was increased from 30 to 60 days.”
At the same time he underlined that “this decision covers only those who entered Turkey beginning from May 4 and does not encompass those, who stayed in that country before this decree entered into force,” he said.
Tolstopyatenko warned that “if a Russian citizen violates this rule and stays on Turkey’s territory for more than 60 days without a visa, then in the airport he/she may be fined. As a rule, by the end of his/her trip no tourist can pay this fine and in this case a tourist can be banned the entry to Turkey for five years.”
According to Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, last year 31.5 million foreign tourists visited the republic, of them 3.5 million are Russians. The Turkish Hotel Association stated that around 40 percent of Russian tourists have already spent vacations in Turkey.
Representatives of Turkey’s tourism business express confidence that despite unpleasant situations, such as road accidents in particular, the country becomes even more popular among Russian tourists from year to year. This happen thanks to a high level of hotel services and the development of a hotel database.