Passengers walk through Terminal 2 of Shanghai Pudong International Airport on December 31, 2025. Photo: VCG

As Turkey's visa-free travel policy for Chinese citizens officially took effect on Friday, travel interest in Turkey has reportedly surged in recent days, with searches for flights from Chinese cities jumping more than threefold on some Chinese travel platforms. Some industry insiders also expect a further boost in the country's popularity among Chinese tourists on the upcoming Spring Festival holiday.  

According to a presidential decree published Turkey's Official Gazette on Wednesday, the country has granted visa-free travel to Chinese citizens holding ordinary passports for tourism and transit, Xinhua News Agency reported. Under the policy, Chinese travelers will be exempt from visa requirements for stays of up to 90 days within any 180-day period. The policy took effect since Friday.

Searches for flights from Chinese cities to Istanbul surged 3.2 times compared to the previous week on online travel platform Qunar as of 10 am on Thursday, while searches for the tourist destination Antalya increased 1.3 times, and for Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city on the Aegean coast, rose by more than twofold, according to data provided to the Global Times by Qunar.

In terms of departure cities, the top ten sources of outbound searches - including  Shanghai, Guangzhou - the capital South China's Guangdong Province, Beijing, and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) - all recorded week-on-week growth of over 200 percent on qunar.com.

Searches for Turkey-only in-depth tours, as well as combined itineraries linking Turkey with Greece and Egypt, also saw a sharp rise on the platform of Spring Tour on Thursday morning, with week-on-week growth exceeding 100 percent, the Global Times learned from the Spring Tour.

Data from Tongcheng Travel also showed that searches for Turkey-related products and itineraries on the platform surged by 235 percent as of 10 am on Thursday compared with the same period the previous day. Among which, flight tickets from popular departure cities including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and HKSAR, attracted significant attention.

Yang Han, a researcher at the Qunar Travel Big Data Research Institute, told the Global Times on Friday that Turkey's visa-free policy is expected to drive a noticeable surge in the popularity of trips to Turkey during the upcoming nine-day Spring Festival holiday, further unleashing Chinese tourists' interests in medium- and long-haul outbound travel.

"Turkey boasts a rich blend of history, culture, and natural beauty, making it one of the most popular outbound destinations for Chinese tourists. In 2025, interest in Turkey rose sharply, " Yang added.

According to Turkey's official data, the number of Chinese visitors rose 65.1 percent year-on-year in 2024 to approximately 410,000, driven by increased flight connectivity and growing interest in the country's cultural heritage sites, according to a Xinhua report.