1. Introduction Tourism is one of the fastest developing services sec- tor nowadays. Its size and the directions of travelling of tourists are dependent mainly on two factors, the economic situation in Poland and the destination country as well as tourist assets and the security of tourism destinations. In the years 2005–2015 all these factors experienced and still keep experienc- ing significant changes that affect the decisions of Polish tourists. During this period the major events which had an impact on tourist behaviour and changes in the chosen destinations were the global economic crisis in 2008–2010 and events of the Arab Spring which affected among others countries such as Egypt and Tunisia – two important tourism des- tinations from the Polish tourist industry’s point of view. Other external factors determining the direc- tions of Polish tourist movement were the economic crisis in Greece and Spain as well as the accession to Journal of Geography, Politics and Society 2016, 6(4), 39–44 DOI 10.4467/24512249JG.16.026.5813 ChanGeS In tourISt traffIC from Poland to turkey on the baCkGround of other maJor dIreCtIonS of travel Emin Atasoy (1), Jan A. Wendt (2) (1) Faculty of Education, Uludağ Üniversitesi, 16059 Nilüfer, Bursa, Turkey, e-mail: geograf1969@gmail.com (corresponding author) (2) Institute of Geography, University of Gdańsk, Bażyńskiego 4, 80-309 Gdańsk, Poland, e-mail: jan.wendt@ug.edu.pl Citation Atasoy  E., Wendt  J.A., 2016, Changes in tourist traffic from Poland to Turkey on the background of other major directions of travel, Journal of Geography, Politics and Society, 6(4), 39–44. abstract The development of outbound tourism from Poland to Turkey after 2010 can be divided into three periods. The first one is con- nected with a stable increase in the number of departures. The second period includes the growth in the number of trips which served as a replacement for vacations in Greece, Egypt or Tunisia. The last period started in 2014, when the number of visitors rapidly declined as the result of terrorist attacks and the military coup in Turkey. Due to concerns about the security after nu- merous terrorist attacks, the traditional destinations of Polish tourism such as France and Morocco lost their popularity. There was the inexorable decline in trust toward countries such as Egypt and in particular Turkey, where the numbers of tourists fell by 63% after the terrorist attacks and military coup. In first half of 2015 we have about 209.2 thous. Polish tourists in Turkey, and in 2016, the same time, only 82.7 thous. what gives decrease of nearly 60.5%. Undoubtedly, the tightening of internal policies after the unsuccessful military coup will deepen the decline in interest in Turkey by Polish visitors. key words Tourism, Polish tourists, Turkey, tourist destination, destabilization, terrorist. 40 Emin Atasoy, Jan A. Wendt the European Union by Poland in 2004 and in subse- quent years by countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia. An increase in the number of terror- ist attacks in Europe, which took place in Belgium, France, Germany or the UK, is also worth mentioning since it caused a decline in the number of tourists visiting these countries to some extent. The development of outbound tourism from Po- land to Turkey after 2010 can be divided into three periods. The first one is connected with a stable increase in the number of departures. The second period includes the growth in the number of trips which served as a replacement for vacations in Greece, Egypt or Tunisia. The last period started in 2014, when the number of visitors rapidly declined as the result of terrorist attacks and the military coup in Turkey. Due to the nature of tourism research, it faces a number of problems. One of the most serious problems is related to the definition of tourism. This is not only theoretical but also methodological is- sue. Depending on the accepted definition, we can estimate the size of tourism in a broader or narrower terms. The broad definition describes tourism as all forms of movement that are not related to work or the change of the place of residence, in home coun- try and abroad. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) states that tourism includes all activities of people who travel and live outside their everyday environment for leisure, business or other purposes for no longer than a year without a break. So we can consider a tourist as a person who stays in a given place at least one day and uses at least one night’s accommodation. The definition of the UNWTO from 1993 (Wendt, 2011) was useful for research of economists and common use by politicians and tour operators, and was designed primarily for statistical purposes. While working on the issue of tourism, the UNWTO’s aim was to create a definition that can be used across the world. It had to be simple, clear and consistent with applicable international standards. Over the years many definitions of tourism have been created by representatives of various scientific disciplines, re- sulting in a number of established definitions of this term coming from different research approaches (Zhakupov et al., 2015). The research uses the classical research methods in the study of tourist movement. The work is based on the statistical analysis of the size of tourist move- ment and analysis of the impact of political events on tourism in Greece and Turkey. The analysis uses data presenting tourist traffic from the „Turystyka” for the years 2014–2015 and data presenting the Polish charter flights to Turkey released in October 2016 by the Civil Aviation Authority in Poland (CAA). 2. Polish tourist movement in 2010–2015 Because of the difficulties in finding out the mo- tives for tourist departures, the analysis of changes in the size of Polish leisure tourist movements leads to a problem of naming their main destinations. Among over ten million Polish citizens who spent the 2010–2015 period abroad, many of them trav- elled for professional reasons, to work or to visit rela- tives and friends (Tab. 1). However, as already stated above, it is difficult to separate a stay with the family from a traditional tourist trip, which is understood as departures for leisure purposes in a rented accom- modation that has to be paid for. Therefore, to deter- mine the main directions it has been assumed that they are the ones which include over 57% stays (av- erage for travel motivation in 2015) which are moti- vated by reasons described in the research as “holi- days, leisure, recreation”. Data was collected with use of the survey research methods, which leads to large differences in assessment of the size of tourist move- ments. Practically, it is impossible to fully estimate this size in the cases of countries like Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, which can be easily accessed by a pri- vate car without any border control that would allow to find out the exact number of travellers crossing the border. However, these numbers are easily at- tainable in the case of air transport, especially char- ter flights, which naturally include mainly outbound tourism. In the second group of countries there are the destinations serving as a traditional labour market for Poles after the accession of Poland to the Euro- pean Union. These are mainly the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Benelux and the Scandinavian countries. The third group consists of Polish neighbours. Coun- tries which share their borders with Poland can be further divided into two additional categories if the difficulty in crossing the border is taken into con- sideration. The first one includes countries of the Schengen area, in which it is difficult to obtain data on the cross-border movement size as well as on the motives for travelling, some of which are shopping trips. Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany share this trait. In the research concerning changes in the tourist movement size in Germany and Lithuania the additional problem is related to the large number of Poles visiting their relatives and friends (Tab. 1). In the case of Germany, it is also the number of people who work in the local market. Countries belonging to the second group of Polish Changes in tourist traffic from Poland to Turkey on the background of other major directions of travel 41 neighbours are Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. It is also impossible to precisely determine the size of tour- ist movement in these countries because of the dif- ficulties in division between the trips aimed to visit family (Polish in Ukraine, Belarus), to do shopping or even those related to the illegal transport of items having high excise tax in Poland (cigarettes, alcohol, fuel). Data presented in table 1, concerning 10  141.1 thousand tourists, presents 93% of the whole for- eign tourist movement of Poles. Other tourism des- tinations popular among Polish tourists such as Ken- ya, Morocco, Thailand or Balkans make up to 7% of tourist flow, which estimates 765.3 thousand depar- tures. This data shows that twelve countries were the main destinations chosen by Polish tourists in 2015. Ten the most visited countries were chosen as the holiday destinations by 180 thousand Poles. Coun- tries which reached these top ranks were Italy, Croa- tia, Greece, Spain, Austria, Turkey, France, Hungary, Egypt and Bulgaria. In the other two destinations, Portugal and Tunisia, the number of visits reached respectively 90 and 80 thousand in 2015. In the years 2010–2015 the number of for- eign departures from Poland increased by 53%, but this growth was even higher when the period Tab. 1. Foreign trips of Poles (aged over 14) in thousand in 2015 Countries Total Holidays, leisure, recreation Business Visiting friends, relatives Other Holidays / Total (%) Total 10 906.4 6 239.2 800.5 3 338.0 528.6 57 Main tourists destination – over 57% travels for holidays, leisure and recreation Italy 879.0 666.7 22.9 103.4 86.0 76 Croatia 632.3 604.6 4.5 11.4 11.8 96 Greece 545.6 522.3 6.5 10.6 6.2 96 Spain 499.5 410.4 16.7 57.1 15.4 82 Austria 375.0 244.1 30.4 82.5 18.1 65 Turkey 369.8 355.7 5.2 2.6 6.2 96 France 356.9 209.4 53.4 68.2 25.9 59 Hungary 243.3 220.4 11.3 5.7 5.9 91 Egypt 240.1 239.4 0.8 0 0 100 Bulgaria 184.0 172.5 8.3 1.5 1.6 94 Portugal 88.0 71.4 3.9 5.5 7.3 81 Tunisia 79.3 78.7 0 0.6 0 99 Travel for all other purpose – less than 57% travels for holidays, leisure and recreation United Kingdom 855.5 115.5 47.8 671.0 21.2 14 Sweden 248.5 105.4 21.2 115.0 6.8 42 Norway 243.3 97.6 22.3 118.5 5.0 40 Netherlands 177.9 49.1 27.7 93.3 7.9 28 Ireland 152.2 16.1 4.6 130.4 1.1 11 United States 123.3 32.2 17.8 56.1 17.3 26 Belgium 109.1 20.8 31.2 53.1 4.1 19 Denmark 95.0 35.7 17.0 37.2 5.2 38 Switzerland 69.1 23.1 7.5 37.7 0.8 33 Poland neighbouring countries, travels for shopping, work, visit relatives and others Germany 2 198.7 451.7 278.3 1 357.0 111.8 21 Czech Republic 584.7 487.4 39.9 39.9 17.6 83 Slovakia 354.1 296.0 8.5 27.4 22.3 84 Lithuania 150.1 94.8 13.0 16.8 25.5 63 Ukraine 145.5 30.2 9.5 90.9 14.8 21 Belarus 72.0 24.5 4.8 36.8 5.9 34 Russia 69.3 23.2 14.7 24.9 6.5 33 Source: Own elaboration based on: Turystyka… (2015, 2016). 42 Emin Atasoy, Jan A. Wendt 2011–2015 was taken into account. During that time an increase of 73% was achieved. In the group of countries chosen for analysis of the changes in the size of tourist movement, the biggest growth was experienced by Hungary. This is mainly due to the relatively small number of tourists in 2011, and an increase of 143 thousand people in 2015 compared to 2011 accounted for more than two-fold increase in the number of visitors. The second and third po- sitions in terms of the highest percentage growth were reached respectively by France (238%) and Italy (220%), traditional travel destinations of Polish tourists. Such a high position is due to a well-known cultural and historical attractiveness. Addition- ally, Italy is also a popular pilgrimage destination of Poles. The next spot in this ranking was taken by Bulgaria, a new destination in Polish tourism, known by many Polish citizens from the period before 1989, when holiday trips to Bulgaria were one of the most popular within communist states of the Eastern Bloc. The fifth spot was reached by Greece, which despite the economic crisis, or possibly because of it, ex- perienced a return of Polish tourists. The economic situation of Greece was the main factor determining a decrease in hotel prices. An unchanging high position in terms of per- centage increase in the number of Polish tourists was taken by Croatia (181%). It is the country with fantastic environmental attractions located by a warm sea, which can be reached from southern Poland even within one day. Croatia has relatively low prices, a language easy to understand and is close to Poland in terms of its religion and culture. The next four countries are a classic winter tourism destination – Austria, summer destinations – Spain and Turkey, as well as a year-round popular country – Egypt. However, the last one, as the only one out of the top ten tourism destinations in Polish outbound tourism, reported a 20% decrease in the number of Polish visitors (Tab. 2). 3. Charter flights from Poland Different data for the size of tourist movement from Poland is supplied by the Civil Aviation Authority (UCL), which offers detailed statistics of flights, in- cluding charter flights – the most interesting infor- mation in the research concerning changes in tourist movement, what makes this data the most reliable. As it can be clearly seen (Tab. 3) charter flights are served by the airports in Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Spain – the main directions of Polish tour- ist movement. Despite excellent natural conditions, rich cul- tural heritage as well as well-developed marketing, which plays a crucial role in conquering the tourist market (Herman, Wendt, 2011), in the years of 2010– 2015 there is a clearly visible significant decline in the number of charter flight passengers at the air- ports in Egypt and Monastir in Tunisia, in contrast to a dynamic growth in the Canary Islands and Turkey. Among the Spanish airports a decrease was record- ed only in Palma de Mallorca (Wendt et al., 2016). An increase in tourist flow from Poland also took place in Israel, Bulgaria, Morocco and Greece. A similar growth of Polish tourist movement was in Croatia (Wendt, 2012), however in their case car transport played a significantly more important role (Wiskul- ski, 2013; Wendt, Wiskulski, 2015). Airports that served the charter traffic smaller than 50 thousand were Gran Canarias, Funchal, Mal- aga and Barcelona. In the years 2010–2015 passen- ger charter traffic from Poland increased from 3.108 million (2010) to 3.663 million (2014), despite the economic crisis in Europe. However, it experienced a slight decrease to a level of 3.657 million in 2015. Data of the Civil Aviation Authority (UCL) concerning the information about air transport of Polish tour- ists using charter flights clearly shows (Tab. 4) that Greece takes the first place, followed up by Turkey and Spain. Egypt takes the fourth place despite a fall in the numbers of tourists. The top fifth rank belongs to Bulgaria. Tab. 2. Main destinations of Polish tourist movement in 2010–2015 in thousand Countries 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2015 / 2010 (%) Bulgaria 100 100 200 150 162.2 184.0 184 Greece 300 300 250 550 470.7 545.6 182 Croatia 300 350 350 800 570.3 632.3 211 Turkey 250 350 300 400 360.4 369.8 148 Egypt 300 300 350 200 236.4 240.1 80 Total 7 100 6 300 10 000 12 950 10 243.0 10 906.0 154 Source: own elaboration based on: Janczak, Patelak (2014); Turystyka… (2015, 2016); Ilieş, Wendt (2015). Changes in tourist traffic from Poland to Turkey on the background of other major directions of travel 43 Tab. 4. Number of passengers using charter flights from Poland in 2015 Country Number of passengers Share in the total air passenger traffic Greece 1 056 794 28.89% Turkey 712 125 19.47% Spain 567 471 15.52% Egypt 369 413 10.10% Bulgaria 258 755 7.07% Source: own elaboration based on data of the ULC (2016). As online tourism portals inform, in 2016 Poles preferred the domestic travel rather than foreign trips, which was influenced by information about the numerous terrorist attacks taking place in Eu- rope. The countries which returned to being the most frequently declared tourist destinations of Polish tourists were Poland (+146%), the Czech Re- public (+131%), Austria (+122%) and Croatia (+94%). Halfway through 2016, Greece also experienced an increase in interest on the Polish tourism market (Bednarz, 2016) and was declared to be the holi- day destination of 5% more tourists than in 2015. Increases were also experienced by Bulgaria (41%), Spain (41%) and Italy (47%). Due to concerns about the security after numer- ous terrorist attacks, the traditional destinations of Polish tourism such as France (-28%) and Morocco (-46%) lost their popularity. There was the inexorable decline in trust toward countries such as Egypt (de- crease of 73%) and in particular Turkey, where the numbers of tourists fell by 63% after the terrorist attacks and military coup (Tab. 5). Comparison 1Q 2015 to 1Q 2016 we can observe degree from 3.7% to 0.7% and in 2Q 2016 from 21.2% to 9.8%. In first half of 2015 we have about 209.2 thous. Polish tour- ists in Turkey, and in 2016, the same time, only 82.7 thous. what gives decrease of nearly 60.5% (Tab. 5). Undoubtedly, the tightening of internal policies af- ter the unsuccessful military coup will deepen the decline in interest in Turkey by Polish visitors. Tab. 5. Charter flights from Poland to Turkey in 2010–2016 Year Number of passengers Share in the total air passenger traffic 2010 598 294 19.25% 2011 681 688 21.00% 2012 586 752 18.53% 2013 583 981 19.62% 2014 702 752 19.19% 2015 712 125 19.47% 2015* 13 807 3.70% 2015** 195 391 21.18% 2016* 2 221 0.74% 2016** 80 534 9.78% *1Q **2Q Source: Bednarz (2016). Tab. 3. Changes in the charter traffic from Poland to chosen tourism destinations in the years of 2010–2015 Destination (airport) Country 2010 [thous.] 2015 [thous.] 2015 / 2010 (%) Antalya Turkey 444.3 458.5 103 Heraklion Greece 144.6 215.5 149 Rodos Greece 110.2 185.9 169 Burges Bulgaria 67.0 183.0 273 Hurghada Egypt 558.6 167.9 30 Zakinthos Greece 40.0 156.6 392 Bodrum Turkey 86.2 138.6 161 Kos Greece 40.4 137.0 339 Fuerteventura Spain 47.2 134.1 284 Corfu Greece 39.9 130.8 328 Tenerife Spain 61.8 120.4 195 Sharm El Sheikh Egypt 408.9 108.9 27 Marsa Alam Egypt 38.4 91.5 238 Chania Greece 53.7 89.4 166 Warne Bulgaria 58.1 75.5 130 Dalaman Turkey 70.7 72.2 102 Palma de Mallorca Spain 72.0 71.7 100 Source: own elaboration based on data of the ULC (2016). 44 Emin Atasoy, Jan A. Wendt In 2010 the most desirable destinations of Pol- ish tourists were Italy, France and Spain, with the number of visitors reaching 400-500 thousand. They were followed by Egypt, Croatia and Greece with 300 thousand tourists and Turkey with 250 thousand people. The economic and political crisis in Greece led to Turkey taking over part of the tourist flow, ad- vancing the country to the top three Polish tourist destinations. However, the 2015 terrorist attacks in Turkey and the military coup in 2016 may greatly de- crease the size of Polish tourist traffic in this country. 4. Summary In 2015 Italy, Croatia and Greece were the most popu- lar destinations. Greece gained the tourists’ attention and interests on visiting it as the average price of ho- tel rooms fell in comparison to last years, despite ris- ing rates in many parts of the world. The decreased holiday costs were also observed. What is more, the worsen security situation of other countries located by the Mediterranean Sea and the growing threat of tourists contributed to the rising popularity of Greece as a Polish tourism destination. Austria has also high position as one of the commonly declared travel des- tinations due to its relatively cheap and well-prepared resorts and many facilities like e.g. ski trails. However, similarly to Turkey, which has become less popular since the beginning of 2016, Austria is not being vis- ited by Polish tourists as frequently as it used to be. Despite the low levels of security, but relatively low prices, Egypt still retained much of its popularity, even though it reported a 20% fall in interest in stay- ing there. In 2015 Bulgaria and Hungary became the leaders in the growth of interest and the number of Polish tourist arrivals. Trips to the countries neighbouring with Poland enjoy persisting popularity, among which Germany remains the leader. The high level of participation of countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia re- sults from cross-border tourism as well as winter ski holidays. Many trips to Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine are related to visits to relatives, as in each of these countries a large Polish diasporas exists. The second, equally important reason for visiting these countries, primarily Ukraine, Belarus but also Russia, is shopping tourism. Foreign trips to Germany, which is a leader of every ranking can be explained by numerous reasons. The large Polish of nearly one million people residing in Germany encourages many travellers to visit their relatives and friends. These reasons include also travel for work purposes and cross-border tourism. All these motives do not allow for recognition of Germany as a typical destination for Polish leisure tourism. Simi- larly, the large number of trips to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Norway indicates that they are places of Polish labour migration, and they do not serve as holiday destinations. The situation of Italy is different. 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