Around 10.79 million residents took domestic trips in the first quarter of the year, according to data released by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) yesterday. Domestic trips with one or more night's stay increased by 9.6 percent reaching 13.96 million trips compared to the same period the previous year.

TurkStat's report stated that domestic visitors made 104.92 million overnight trips. While the average number of overnight trips was 7.5, the average expenditure per trip was TL 265 ($95). Trip expenditures of domestic tourists rose by 12.2 percent reaching to TL 3.69 billion in the first quarter of 2015 compared to same quarter the previous year.

Domestic tourism expenditures were composed of individual expenditures and package tour expenditures. In this quarter, 97.8 percent of domestic tourism expenditure was individual (TL 3.61 billion), while 2.2 percent of it was package tour expenditures (TL 80.25 million), according to the report of TurkStat.

The primary purpose of trips was visiting relatives with 69.9 percent, while the secondary purpose was health with 11.4 percent and the third was travel, leisure and holiday with 8.8 percent.

TurkStat's report revealed that domestic visitors stayed mostly at "the house of a friend or relative" with 88.61 million overnights in this quarter. While "own house" took second place with 6.49 million overnights, "hotel" took third place with 4.23 million overnights.