Some Turkish hotels intend to abandon all-inclusive
Thus, the mayor of Antalya, Mustafa Akaydın, stated that the all-inclusive system is a double-edged sword that, "while attracting many tourists, hits private entrepreneurs hard." According to him, owners of five-star hotels are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the proper level of service while keeping prices at the same level.
Hotel workers have long said that when given unlimited access to drinks and food, tourists consume significantly more than the biological norm and all calculated values. But outside business seminars and hotel schools, these observations had no practical application until recently. It was always believed that tourists come to Turkey precisely for all-inclusive and the opportunity to live in "five stars" without denying themselves anything. In other countries, such a level of service combined with a package of services costs significantly more.
Faced with serious economic difficulties, Turkish entrepreneurs faced a choice: either raise prices, lower the level of service, or abandon all-inclusive. And they chose, to give them credit, the most transparent option – the latter. Representatives of the tourism business believe that the Rixos experience will be the start of a mass rejection of a system that is attractive to tourists but ruinous for entrepreneurs.
It is worth noting that the authorities and entrepreneurs of Antalya have already stated that they will be watching the results of the Bodrum experiment with interest, and if it yields a positive result, they will follow suit.
According to the Turkish Hoteliers Federation, about 80% of the country's hotels offer all-inclusive – this service system is more widespread only in the Caribbean. Breakfast-only or half-board service is maintained in a number of city hotels in Antalya and Alanya, as well as on the Aegean coast. On Mediterranean resorts, accommodation facilities that do not practice all-inclusive are a rarity.
Of course, we are talking so far only about truly high-end chain five-star hotels. Non-chain four- and three-star hotels are unlikely to follow their example, since their income strongly depends on tourists "hooked" on all-inclusive, reports RIA Novosti. Besides the formed habit of tourists to pay for everything once, there is the issue of the lack of necessary infrastructure in Turkey to serve tourists. If in Spain, Italy and Greece there are many small and large cities with restaurants, cafes, shops, thermal complexes and beauty salons, where tourists are accustomed to being served at the highest level and staff more or less speak four or five languages, then in Turkey there is nothing of the kind. The rare restaurants where tourists are taken cannot constantly serve the huge number of vacationers from giant hotels.
Consequently, in the first years of such a transition, Turkey risks losing many foreign vacationers. And tourists will have to additionally pay for services that used to be free, because initially there will be no competition among on-site restaurants, cafes, and spa complexes anyway.