Early booking to drive an upturn in tourism revenues

Turkish hotels and tour operators are offering early booking services for a specified period each year, expecting to attract more customers with a number of discounts. As this year’s early booking season opened earlier than usual, customers will have more time to look for and purchase package tours at affordable prices. With the encouragement of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the early booking season kicked off on Feb. 8. The operators have ended the first week with an average 30 percent increase in demand over the first week of early bookings last year. Discounts will be available through March. 8.

Ahmet Celal Bektaş from Hey Tour says they are seeing the benefit of introducing early bookings for a longer period this year when compared to past years. “There is a noticeable increase in early bookings. We expect to make around 25,000 more early bookings this year over 2009, and EMITT will hopefully contribute to achieving this target.”

Bektaş said the longer a company offers early bookings for, the better it will promote its services, and this will in turn lead to an increase in customers. The company official said they anticipate some 35 percent of their domestic tours will be through early bookings in 2010.

Recalling that her company offers discounts of up to 40 percent for various tour options, Jolly Tur customer and public relations manager Belgin Bayrak thinks they will secure 40 percent of their total reservations through early bookings this year. Bayrak said there had been a slump in revenue due to the global financial crisis last year, but added, however, that they hope 2010 will be a year when business picks up. “We are already receiving positive signs from the market. A growing demand for early bookings is a major indicator to this end.” The company representative said there will be increases in prices following the end of early bookings and that customers should hurry to benefit from the advantageous prices.

Bayrak underlined that a major factor that has attracted more customers to book early this year was that companies will allow cancelations up to 72 hours in advance of a tour. “We ensure that customers will be able to cancel directly or postpone a booking without being charged any extra for this.”

This early booking concept is growing fast in Turkey, said Suat Özbek, Etstur domestic tours manager; his company has seen a 32 percent increase in early bookings in the first week of discount bookings this year over 2009. “We are offering the same prices as we did last year, and people are happy with this. More customers are flocking to tour operators to book the cheapest possible tours.” Özbek also explained that prices could increase in the coming weeks and that now is the best time to take advantage of discounts.

Despite his excitement at the growth in business this season, Özbek has some reservations. “Some companies are introducing misleading promotions. For instance a company that normally sells a tour for TL 1,000 increases this number to TL 1,500 during the early booking season and tries to attract people with exaggerated discounts.” He underlined that people should not be deceived by high discounts but first compare prices between companies. “They will eventually find out who offers the best prices.”

According to Bektaş, Turkish tourists should be better informed about the advantages of early booking. “In Western Europe and the US, more than half the packages are taken through early bookings. This system is better established in these countries.” The major reason for this, Bektaş argues, is that these countries started offering the concept of early booking earlier than in Turkey. He thinks it will attract more attention with a diversification in services and more effective promotion.

Bayrak agrees with Bektaş and says Turkish people are getting more used to benefiting from the early booking system than in the past. “We can see that the system is developing every year in Turkey.”