The Eastern Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Fair EMITT, which has been touted with the motto of the meeting point of world tourism for a quarter of a century, but which has received reaction after reaction from the leading non-governmental organizations and representatives of the tourism sector in recent years with the embargoes imposed on travel agencies, the low number of participants and the high number of non-sectoral visitors called baggers, and which was introduced with the slogan of the biggest meeting of the Eastern Mediterranean and Eurasia in tourism, continues to shoot itself in the foot and prepare its end.Preparing to open its doors for the 28th time in 2025, claiming to be the 4th largest tourism fair in the world in 2018 and the 5th largest tourism fair in the world in 2019, EMITT participants, who claim that it was among the 3 largest tourism fairs in the world until 4 years ago, stated that the number of halls, which was previously up to 12 due to low participation, was limited to 5-6 halls, which also showed this decline.In 2020, Hyve Group Regional Director Kemal Ülgen sent a letter to travel agencies stating that due to the sanctions imposed on Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and the Crimea Region, including Sevastapol, they prohibited any activities involving these countries and regions within the scope of the fair, Kaan Şaf, one of the partners of Day Tours Tourism Organization, one of the travel agencies to which the letter was sent, said that they had made the fair agreement with the relevant company a year in advance, but days before the start of the fair, they were notified in writing that they could not promote the Cuba region where they organized tours within the scope of the event, and an avalanche of reaction from the sector to the embargoist EMITT Tourism Fair.Held in 2022 at the TÜYAP Fair and Congress Center in Büyükçekmece, the fair, whose number of exhibitors decreased every year, welcomed visitors in only 3 halls, while the heart of the tourism sector beat only in the 7th hall, and the other parts were tried to be filled with companies that had nothing to do with the tourism sector.Hyve Group, which drew the reaction of tourism sector representatives with the EMITT Fair it organized in Turkey, transferred its Istanbul-based company Hyve Fuarcılık Anonim Şirketi and its subsidiaries to ICA Events for 166 million liras (£8 million) and divested its Eastern and Southern Europe division along with turkey after Ukraine and Russia.Preparing to open its doors for the 28th time, the Eastern Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Fair EMITT 2025 is already a matter of curiosity as to how many halls there will be stands in total and how many of these stands will be related to the tourism sector.
