Dutch tourists avoiding Turkey after attacks; Travel down 40 pct.

Recent attacks in Turkey have been a blow to the countries tourism. Bookings to travel to Turkey is currently 40 percent lower than a year ago, tour operator TUI announced along with its quarterly figures. The tour operator also noticed a sharp decline in tourists traveling to Egypt, after a Russian plane was shot down in the Sinai desert in November last year. TUI provisionally cancelled all trips to Sharm al-Sheikh, from where the Russian plane took off. Despite these disasters, the number of TUI holiday bookings for the summer is currently 1 percent higher than at the start of last year. Bookings to Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom particularly showed an increase. “We have delivered a good start to the new financial year, despite the backdrop of geopolitical turbulence in some of our destinations. As an integrated tourism group, TUI is strategically well positioned to tackle the challenges in this turbulent market environment." Fritz Joussen, CEO of the TUI Group said.