In recent years, Turkey has managed to score points against other sunny destinations by offering cheap holiday packages. But high inflation changes the data.

The financial audit Handelsblatt writes: “The devaluation of the currency, which today has reached a rate of more than 50%, has long left its mark on the tourism industry. According to data service provider STR Global, the daily price of hotel rooms in Antalya increased by 37.4% compared to the previous year to an average of 110 euros, while in the financial metropolis of Istanbul the average price even reaches 138 euros . The European average is slightly higher, at around 140 euros.

This development is recent – and has surprised many European tourists. Even in the winter season, German travel agents were advertising cheap offers for holidays in Turkey – with accommodation cheaper than in Germany, where heating costs were constantly rising due to the energy crisis.”

But now the prices are constantly increasing due to inflation. As Hamit Kuk, a member of the board of directors of the Association of Turkish Travel Agents (Türsab), points out in the German newspaper, serious competitive disadvantages arise from this. “Inflation in Turkey is higher than in countries that are its major competitors, like in Greece and Spain”. Additionally, “the problem could get even worse in the summer of 2024. As Cook says, ‘high prices affect bookings for next year, especially for early bookers.'”

Many warned against large price increases. Denis Ugur, head of the travel agency Bentour, explains that initially “the increases were justified by high demand and increased energy and salary costs”, while many hoteliers estimated that the tourist boom would continue in 2023. “But this turned out to be wrong. The number of overnight stays increased particularly strongly in Greece, by 143%, but also in Italy and Spain. In Turkey alone, the number of hotel nights decreased by 8%,” the financial newspaper concludes.

“Governing Spain is becoming more difficult than ever”

In the first parliamentary session after the elections, the socialist Francina Armengol was elected president of the parliament. “Former Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists can breathe a sigh of relief. But whether they will be able to govern in the future depends on the Catalan separatists”, she writes Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“Pedro Sanchez could achieve a majority capable of governing. “Could”, because whether or not Spain will soon have a government depends not on the winners of the recent elections – but on those who were punished by the voters: the Catalan separatists, i.e. the Junts per Catalunya of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and the seven deputies of the faction.

Therefore it was eagerly awaited how the party would vote during the meeting. Although the vote was not yet about the future government, it was nevertheless a first message. Until the end the Junts did not specify who it would vote for – and finally chose the socialist Armengol.”

The Munich newspaper explains that “Sanchez had planned her appointment as a concession to the separatists. Armengol, a confidant of Sanchez, has served as regional president of the Balearic Islands, where she worked to strengthen the Catalan language. […] But in addition, immediately before the vote it became known that the Junts and Sanchez’s PSOE had agreed, among other things, that Spain would in the future make the Catalan language an official language both in parliament and at EU level.

[…] The dispute over Spain’s official languages ​​other than “Spanish”, i.e. Castilian, is highly political. In areas where the far-right Vox holds sway, measures to promote the Catalan language were recently abolished. […] The dispute in question would thus pose a double challenge for a future government under Pedro Sanchez: among his supporters, separatists could set the tone. And many responsibilities in areas such as education or health would be in the hands of his opponents, the right-wing regional governments. So, even if Sanchez manages to gather a majority, governing Spain will be more difficult than ever.”

Greece: Siesta to avoid the heat

In Greece, many people enjoy spending their afternoons relaxing: either by taking a simple lunch break from work, or by taking a nap. “In Greece, public life calms down towards the afternoon as the temperature regularly exceeds 40 degrees around 2pm. Whether they are supermarket clerks, doctors or tax accountants, from 2.30pm onwards they leave their work for at least two and a half hours – both in summer and winter,’ the website reports Merkur.de.

“In this way one can avoid the greatest heat. Only at 17:00 do people resume their work, when the air has cooled down a bit. […] But not everyone follows this unwritten rule. As George Karalis, who now lives in Germany, says, “about half of Greeks systematically take a break from work at noon. The workers start at about 6 in the morning and finish at 2 in the afternoon.” He himself owned a car wash in Greece and worked whenever there were customers. […] In Germany, on the contrary, his break is short, but he studies in the early afternoon. And he likes that, as he has more free time for his family and himself.”