ANKARA

Turkish domestic tourism spending increased 14% year-on-year in 2018, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) on Tuesday. 

Trip expenditures of domestic tourists reached to 40.3 billion liras (some $8.2 billion) last year, up from 35.3 billion liras (around $9.7 billion) in 2017.

The average U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was around 4.90 in 2018, while one dollar traded for 3.64 liras on average previous year.

The number of domestic trips with one or more than one overnights rose 1.7% on an annual basis to 78.5 million in 2018.

Last year, domestic visitors made 633.7 million overnights.

The average number of overnights was 8.1 and the average expenditure per trip was 513 Turkish liras (some $105).

"Annually, while 91.3% of domestic tourism expenditure was individual with 36.8 billion liras ($7.5 billion), 8.7% of it was package tour expenditures with 3.5 billion liras ($714 million)," TurkStat said.

Visiting relatives was the primary purpose of trip at 64 percent, followed by travel, leisure, and holiday at 26.8 %, and health at 4.6 %.

"Domestic visitors stayed mostly at 'house of friend and relative' with 443.6 million overnights," it said.