Turkey president, Recep Tayap Erdogan, recently visited Nigeria as part of Turkey’s efforts to strengthen ties with Africa and Nigeria, and invited President Muhammadu Buhari to Turkey for the Turkey African Conference in December.
The Turkish city of Bodrum wants to capitalize on its special ties with Nigeria to boost tourism.
Based on this, the Mayor of Bodrum, Ahmet Aras, hosted a Nigerian lead team for exploratory discussions led by Cecile Doumbe of CMD Tours, an Abuja-based tour operator.
Ambassador Ikechi Uko, a travel specialist, and Adebayo Ajayi, the Travel Sultan of Abay Tours, were among the group.
According to the Mayor of Bodrum, Turkey has everything the Nigerian traveller wants. “We have amazing shopping for top quality materials. We also have wonderful destinations. The historical legends of Turkey are unparalleled for both Christians and Muslims. This is why we want Nigerians to come and enjoy our Mediterranean culture within Asia,” the Mayor said.
He added: “Bodrum is home to many ancient civilisations of Greece and the Island of Rhodes. We have the largest underwater museum in the world. AirBnB started from Bodrum over 50 years ago. We had no hotels then and we gave our houses for bed and breakfast. But today we have the most luxurious vacations in Europe. I will be coming to Nigeria to market Bodrum and I invite Nigerians to the Mediterranean Tourism Expo in Bodrum taking place in October.”
The exploratory team, which was invited by Skywings Istanbul, was hosted to a city tour of Istanbul, the city of two continents, visiting the European and the Asian sides of Istanbul with stops at the world famous Hagia Sophia of Constantinople.
At a meeting with the Bodrum Hoteliers Association, the President, Omer F. Dengiz, told them that Bodrum has a population of 130,000 citizens but receives over 1.3 million tourists every year mainly from Britain and Germany. “Bodrum has over 1000 hotels with about 150,000 rooms and more than 300,000 beds that cost between $50 and $500. There are boutique hotels and luxury collections,” he added.
After facility visits and city tour of Bodrum, which included visits to the castle and the museum of Halicarnisus, a former ancient wonder of the world, the team departed for Antalya. Antalya is the town where Paul the Apostle started his missionary journey in the Bible. Stopovers at Cappadocia completed the tour. The team from Turkey is expected in Nigeria for a series of roadshows to introduce Turkey to Nigerian tour operators and professionals. A series of famtrips are also planned to Turkey in the course of the year.
Team Leader Ms. Doumbe told them that Nigerians were great travellers and were looking for new destinations, adding that Turkey was perfect. She introduced the team as experts to deliver the mandate desired by the Mayor.
Bodrum has been described as unique, chic, and special by tourists who troop there from April to October every year.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
