One of the main advantages of Turkey has always been hotels operating on an all-inclusive system. And no matter how some active citizens criticize such a 'vegetable' vacation, when you can spend days on end without thinking, without worrying about where to put your wallet in wet swim trunks, shuttling along the route 'room-bar-restaurant-beach', no matter how they recall disgraceful drunken antics after multi-day alcohol marathons, all-inclusive is convenient. Despite rising prices, there is something psychologically attractive about all-inclusive: you seem to have paid a lot, but you get the impression that you ate and drank even more - as if for free, 'on the house'. Clearly, this is not the case - but it warms the soul. Especially understandable are parents going on vacation with young children: there is animation, kids' clubs, varied meals, and everything is already paid for.
However, the Turkish authorities quite fairly reasoned that a tourist fed in one place will not go left or right out of the hotel, and therefore will leave much less money in cafes and shops, reports Turkish Daily News. They calculated how much a vacationer could spend at the resort, compared it with how much he currently spends without leaving the hotel compounds, and decided to actively fight against such a phenomenon ruinous for local budgets as all-inclusive: to force the vacationer to walk through all local eateries, drop into all shops and stores along the way, and even inside the hotel to make him pay for every step.
There is another side to the problem: many all-inclusive hotels have discredited themselves by offering a small selection of tasteless dishes and exclusively cheap local drinks. This has led to such hotels being associated by tourists with a low level of both food and service. And therefore many hotels on the popular Antalya coast have now decided to gradually stop working under the usual system.
All-inclusive hotels have been out of favor with the state for a long time. Their number was already attempted to be reduced several years ago. And now this year, after the end of the season, when hotels begin to think about how to move forward and what to change for next summer, regional authorities have joined the fight. They stated that only 15% of tourists spend money outside such hotels, and that is wrong. However, it is unclear whether local administrators can influence the policy of private hotels, for which tourists from the same Russia, coming precisely for carefree pre-paid vacation at home, are a tasty morsel of the international market. Not all hotels are likely to change, but some hoteliers will undoubtedly support the initiative. Thus, several years ago, when opening new hotels, there was talk that it would be more profitable for hotels themselves to operate on a BB (breakfast) or HB (half-board) basis. But many then feared losing to competitors, and therefore were forced to become all-inclusive to please the Russians.
What awaits Turkish hotels next season? Will they be able, by retraining, to significantly increase revenue from tourists? Probably not. Turkey already has a certain image, and 'convenient' all-inclusive hotels are an integral part of it. To break and change it requires considerable time and money. Especially since at the resorts of this country, unlike European coasts, there are not many alternatives to hotel restaurants. Even people staying in hotels are urged by our doctors to be cautious - there have been cases of poisoning. So will many going on vacation with children be interested in the prospect of eating who knows where (Turkey is a country for children's vacations, that's another characteristic feature)?
Most likely, such innovations will scare off those who still remained loyal to the Turkish coast. This will become just another reason to switch to Bulgarian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Italian, or, for example, Greek. Especially since the Greeks, on the contrary, have adapted some hotels to the Russian market, reorienting them to all-inclusive.
Based on materials from Turist.ru