Restaurants in some Turkish holiday towns are sitting half-empty in peak tourist season, as many locals find it’s cheaper to holiday in neighboring Greece than stay and eat in one of their own country’s world-famous resorts.

Angry citizens have taken to social media to share their bills, including the equivalent of $640 for food and drinks for five people in Bodrum and $30 for five scoops of ice cream in Cesme. Meanwhile from Mediterranean Greek islands just a few kilometers away, their fellow Turks boast they’re paying far less than prices at home.

“There’s a huge difference between the service and product quality, as well as prices here and there,” said Murat Yavuz, a retired Turkish banker who regularly visits Greece. “Restaurants here have used inflation as a pretext to push up prices.”

Restaurant and hotel prices rose by an average 91% in June from a year earlier, topping already eye-watering headline inflation of 71.6%. The sector constitutes a third of the services economy that the central bank has highlighted as a particular cause of concern in its fight against spiraling prices.

  • @bookcrawler
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    55 months ago

    The images of menus from ~3 years ago have prices that line up with the average monthly wages. The recent photos of menus have the prices blanked out.

    The “new” price of ~850 TRY for a single serving is over 25% of the average monthly wages (2900-3200). The site providing wages doesn’t specify if that’s the average earnings before or after tax either. Prices on older menus are more like ~50 TRY for the same item.

    • @spongebue
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      45 months ago

      850TRY is currently about $26 USD, or about $.03 to a lira. Holy crap, I was there about 10 years ago and a lira was about $.50!

    • @[email protected]
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      25 months ago

      average monthly wages (2900-3200)

      I’m not sure where you found this but it’s severely outdated. Average wages were around 10000₺ in 2022 (probably mean) and the minimum wage has trpiled since then.

      And I’m not sure what kind of a meal the 850₺ number is for, but it’s definitely not what you pay for an ordinary meal outside. In Ankara usual prices are between 500₺ and 150₺. Prices do balloon when you go to touristy places or places that serve hard drinks tho.

      • @bookcrawler
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        5 months ago

        Thanks for the correction! The site I was using was a site for English speakers considering moving to Turkey. It was difficult to verify with my lacking language skills.

        The 850₺ was the average cost I could find while poking about restaurant listing in Istanbul so I was likely getting touristy places. It was very difficult to find a place with prices on their recent menu photos or websites as well. I suspect the places I was finding were more upscale/touristy than local.