Expedia officials state that 2010 has been a succesful year for Turkish tourism and the world’s interest in Turkey is growing.

Expedia Vice President of Market Management Mr. Hari Nair, reports: “We saw a healthy increase from 2009 to 2010 from people booking travel to Turkey online via our web sites. Incoming tourism into Turkey through Expedia sites grew 615% in the last 5 years. Despite the set back in Quarter 2 because of the Volcanic Ash incident in Iceland, the overall number of visitors in Turkey showed an increase from 2009 in 2010 and Turkey gained further competitive advantage versus other neighboring countries.

In new emerging destinations for Expedia like Anatolia, Expedia saw an increase of over 50% from 2009 of customers booking a package. Whereas in primary markets, such as Antalya, the package production increase in 2010 was over 40% from 2009. The majority of Expedia’s customers coming to Turkey are from the USA (29%). Others include UK, France, Italy and Germany.”

Mr. Nair added “2011 also looks optimistic with Expedia having reservations in the books already until November. April shows a significant pickup comparing to last year and May/June are looking particularly strong as well.”

While the interest in Turkey grows, Expedia is expanding its local network and team in Turkey via turkiye.hotels.com Turkish since 2008 and continues to bring the world to the Turkish hotels.

About Expedia: Since its launch in 1996, Expedia keeps being #1 online travel agency globally. Expedia, Inc. is the largest and biggest online travel company in the world, with an extensive brand portfolio of online booking and travel information sites, including: Expedia.com®- Hotels.com®-Hotwire®; Venere.com™; Egencia™, TripAdvisor® Media Network and eLong™. Expedia operates more than 90 localized travel websites, up to 33 worldwide languages in 60 countries across the globe, covering North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Expedia delivers consumer travel demand from nearly every continent to more than 130,000 hotels and hundreds of airlines, tour operators, car rental companies, and destination services supply partners. And Expedia has more than 60 million travel shoppers each month, 67 million hotel room nights booking in a year and also 850,00 flight shoppers’s visits, 864,000 hotel shoppers’ visits, 78,000 activity shopper’s visits per day.