£12 Coivd insurance, £25 covid tests and no vaccine passport needed. Turkey is set to open the doors for tourist this summer…

Turkey has announced it intends to welcome UK travellers this summer as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic permits international travel from the UK, and the country is taking all steps necessary to ensure it continues to be safe.

Announcing that the country will be prioritising its vaccination program for employees at hotels and other tourist facilities for the upcoming tourism season.

Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, The Minister of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, said: “We are looking forward to welcoming British tourists with open arms, as we did safely last summer. We have world-class border processes in place for ensuring travel will be low-risk throughout Turkey. We are working with the British authorities to ensure these necessary processes are world-class and as up-to-date as possible. We will not require vaccination passports from international travellers when entering the country.”

Ersoy stated that “After April 15th, we will look at the number of cases again, we will re-evaluate the situation and then decide if we will continue to require negative PCR test results from British citizens entering the country. I expect there will be no such requirement from British visitors as the UK Government is rapidly, and impressively, rolling out the vaccination program for the whole nation and a significant portion of the population will be vaccinated by early summer.”

He continued: “To ensure our visitors can enjoy a safe and healthy holiday at all stages of their trip, we will continue to invest in the “Safe Tourism Certification Program” which we launched in 2020. We have expanded the scope this year and made it compulsory for hotels and other accommodation facilities with 30 rooms or more. More than 8.000 facilities have been certified so far.”

All hotels certified under the “Safe Tourism Certification Program” provide testing facilities for tourists so they can obtain test results, if needed, before departing Turkey for the UK or elsewhere. Tests cost approximately £25 and are also available to be carried out at Turkey’s international airports.

In addition, tourists visiting Turkey are offered a special insurance package, (around£12) which covers Covid-19 related expenses such as treatment, medication and emergency care costs that may be incurred if visitors are taken to a state-owned or private pandemic hospital during their stay in Turkey. The Covid-19 Accommodation Support Insurance also guarantees to cover any extra accommodation expenses that may be necessary during the trip, following the issuance of a medical report requiring them to be kept under supervision in a hotel.

Mehmet Nuri Ersoy added that “We are confident that the successful vaccination programmes ongoing in both the UK and Turkey will ensure this season is even safer than last year. More than 10 million vaccinations have been given in Turkey so far.”

Two and a half million British tourists visited Turkey during past years, with visitors staying in popular areas including Istanbul, Bodrum, Dalaman and Izmir.