Turkey's tourism drives up numbers

More and more people are heading to Turkey for their holidays, according to figures.

The Istanbul 2020 bid reports the country has already seen 22 million visitors this year - beating the figure of 21.5 million seen during the same period last year and ranking Turkey among the top 10 most visited countries in the world.

A separate survey from MasterCard showed Istanbul was behind only London and Paris when it came to visitor growth in Europe and fifth in the whole world. The survey estimated 11 million people would visit the city this year.

Hasan Arat, the head of the Istanbul bid said: "These figures highlight that more and more tourists are being attracted to Turkey's vibrant culture, rich history, hospitable people and spectacular location which bridges Europe and Asia."

He went on to explain the number of hotels and apartments at tourists' disposal has increased by over two-thirds since 2002 and it is estimated in the next three years, tourists will have 370,000 rooms to choose from.

"This is one of the great strengths of our bid, which will be demonstrated in our candidature file next year," Arat added.