Hajj

Istanbul's museums, among the most popular tourist spots in the city, will continue to host art and history enthusiasts during the Eid al-Adha holiday, which will run from Aug. 11 to 14.

An analysis undertaken by the Yandex Navigator application has suggested that Turkish vacationers who are leaving the city for the Eid al-Adha holiday ("Festival of the Sacrifice") get on the road either early Aug. 9 or Aug. 10 afternoon to avoid traffic entanglements.

With Eid al-Adha ("Festival of the Sacrifice) just around the corner, sacrificial animal sellers say that their sales will boom once retirees receive their pension bonus on Aug. 8-9.

At least 72,000 Turkish pilgrims have arrived in Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj, according to a local religious official.

Turkey's different business sectors disagree over how long the Eid al-Adha ("Feast of Sacrifice") holiday should be. Tourism players want a nine-day-long public holiday, while businesspeople in other sectors argue that duration would slow down the economy due to a loss in labor force.

The first group of prospective Turkish pilgrims left Istanbul on July 5 for the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia for the upcoming annual Hajj duty.

The head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) on Dec. 10 met with Saudi Arabia's hajj and umrah minister to reach an agreement on services to be provided next year for Turkish pilgrims making their way to Islam's holiest cities for pilgrimages amid concern over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

More than nine million local tourists have spent 9 billion Turkish Liras ($1.5 billion) on Turkish resorts in the last nine-day Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice) holiday, with Turkish holidaymakers who visited Greece seeing a sharp plunge amid the lira's fall. 

Turkish Airlines (THY) has served over 2.3 million passengers over the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha or the "Feast of Sacrifice" from Aug. 17 to Aug. 26. 

More than 104,000 local and foreign tourists visited the travertine falls of Pamukkale, together with the adjacent ancient city of Hierapolis, in the first eight days of the nine-day Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice) holiday, according to tourism representatives.