The German source market perceptions: how risky is Turkey to travel to?

The purpose of this paper is to get a better understanding of the influence of terrorism on risk perception and attitudes of the German travel behavior toward Turkey as a destination in crisis, which has been considered one of the biggest losers for 2016.

The research process involved an online self-administered method created with one of the leading research and web-based survey tools called Qualtrics. This tool has been considered useful to reach a wider target, the questionnaire filled in by 305 respondents.

The findings revealed a strong tendency of a low safety perception among the sample toward Turkey. Furthermore, a large proportion indicated a strong unlikelihood of traveling to the country within the upcoming 12 months independently of a past travel experience. In addition, Turkey and Egypt were the countries perceived as most unsafe among the mentioned destinations.

The majority of the respondents of the study were aged between 50 and 59 years and were employed as commercial employee, office or administration workers. The outcomes might be different for a higher sample size with a tendency of various demographic characteristic such as age and profession. Furthermore, the study should be repeated while focusing on respondents with accompanied children on holidays, which only made up a minority for the present research study.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to examine the influence of terrorism on risk perception and attitudes of the German travel behavior toward Turkey and their risk reduction strategies/preventive measures.