The İstanbul Culture and Tourism Directorate figures for 2009 revealed that that historic city attracted 7,509,741 foreign and local tourists last year, the Anatolia news agency reported. July saw the greatest number of tourists visiting İstanbul, at 915,620.The number of tourists visiting İstanbul rose by 6.5 percent in 2009 over 2008 figures. In 2008, 7,046,234 tourists visited the city, according to records kept by the Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen airports along with the Haydarpaşa, Karaköy and Pendik ports.
The majority of tourists came to the city by air in 2009, with the number of airplane passengers arriving in İstanbul increasing by 7.5 percent over the previous year. Tourists arriving in İstanbul by ship decreased 6.8 percent for the same period.
More than 6 million of the city’s tourists flew into İstanbul Atatürk Airport, whereas 12 percent of visitors coming to İstanbul by air landed at Sabiha Gökçen. Most tourists who travelled by ship entered the city through the Port of Karaköy.
Germans made up the largest number of foreign tourists visiting the city, with 14.8 percent of the total. The UK and France ranked second and third, with 5.7 percent and 5.1 percent of tourists to İstanbul, respectively.
İstanbul hosted 2,918,834 foreign visitors from 200 countries; the remainder came from other areas of Turkey. There are currently 61,246 licensed hotels in the city with the capacity to host 106,191 people; several hotels are currently under construction to expand the city’s hotel bed capacity.
