One of the sectors affected by the Instagram access ban is tourism. Mehmet Can Özdemir, a member of the İzmir Regional Representative Board of the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TÜRSAB), stated that the access ban, which came in the middle of the season, has reduced reservations. He warned that if it continues, they will struggle in September and October. Özdemir claimed that approximately 30% of the estimated 2 billion TL monthly economic loss due to the Instagram access ban would belong to the tourism sector.
Mehmet Can Özdemir, stating that Instagram is a vital tool for tourism in advertising, sales, and marketing compared to other media and social media platforms, said, “Currently, we can't figure out how the algorithm works, we can't restrict advertising budgets, and Facebook remains open. We are trying to analyze how the algorithm is affected by Facebook being open. If a business has 50,000 followers on Instagram, it has 25,000 on Facebook. Our customer base is not on Facebook; the younger generation is not there. The advertising cycle hasn't fully settled on other social media tools. Instagram is the social media platform that the tourism sector's customers follow."
Özdemir pointed out that a medium-sized travel agency spends approximately 150,000 TL monthly on social media advertising. He noted that they lack the ability to analyze customer data such as age, gender, region, and income with the free data provided by META, which helps in forming advertising and marketing strategies and filtering for new advertisements accordingly.
Will the Sector's Loss Be Compensated?
Özdemir mentioned that they are waiting for an explanation from META regarding whether the previously paid advertising fees will be refunded during the Instagram outage. He believes that the loss in reservations due to the platform's closure will not be compensated. Özdemir added, "This is the peak period for tourism revenue. We, travel agencies, and cultural tour operators have a fixed capacity. We prepay for every unsold seat on planes, whether they are filled or not. We rely on last-minute sales. Sometimes, we try to sell those two empty seats by increasing the advertising budget three days before the tour starts. The closure of Instagram ties our hands in this regard. In 5-6 days, September and October sales will begin, but we can't take action because we can't run ads. Our ads are live, and we've paid for them, but we don't know what return we are getting. If this continues in September, October, and November, the tourism industry will struggle."
“We Are Trying to Fill the Reservation Gap with Old Methods”
Özdemir said they are trying to reach their customers through old methods, such as sending short messages to phones and emails, to fill the reservation gap. He mentioned, “I have 1,600 unread text messages on my phone, but we expect customers to read the SMS messages sent to their phones. Since mass WhatsApp messaging is not legal, we cannot use it either.”