In the 2018 tourism report published by the European Travel Commission, Turkey had the biggest tourist count increase among 33 European countries and Istanbul, one of the top 10 most visited cities in the world, has broken records by hosting over 13 million tourists in 2018, an increase of 24%.

To introduce the city more effectively on an international scale, İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality has started a new project called "Visit İstanbul". 'Visit İstanbul' has already hosted fashion and travel stars from different countries, and will now focus its campaign on the United Kingdom.

According to the report, the number of tourists visiting Turkey has increased by 22% to reach 46.1 million, while 1 out of 3 of these tourists preferred İstanbul. The number of English tourists (the top visitors to Turkey and İstanbul) has increased by 23% and reached 2.2 million.

İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality has started a new digital tourism project called "Visit İstanbul" to tell about the historical and cultural values of İstanbul on an international scale. United Kingdom, Russia, Middle East Countries, USA, Germany, France, India, and China have been determined as target countries. Throughout one year, a different tourism-oriented project will be carried out with target countries particularly via digital platforms.

First introductory movie is launched.

The first 'History' themed introductory movie of Visit İstanbul project 'Meet With History Of Your Dream City' has been published on project's social media pages. In the movie, including original pieces of music, extremely colorful and magnificent scenes about the monumental history of Istanbul are shown. The next movie will be 'Gastronomy Istanbul' introducing the cuisine of Istanbul.

Fashion phenomenons meet in İstanbul.

For the project, four fashion phenomenons of social media have met in İstanbul at the start of the campaign. Laura Comolli from Italy, Barbora Ondrackova from the Czech Republic, Michèle Krusi from Switzerland and Simla Canpolat from Turkey took a full city tour over 3 days and shared images with their followers.