Intrepid Travel tour operator encourages travellers to continue visiting Turkey

Operator has raised more than US$150,000 in its Turkey appeal to support earthquake victims

Intrepid Travel has encouraged people to continue to visit Turkey following last month’s earthquakes which killed more than 50,000 people.

The operator has raised more than US$150,000 in its Turkey appeal to support victims of the earthquakes, which killed one of Intrepid Travel's tour leaders.

Zina Bencheikh, managing director EMEA for Intrepid, implored travellers continue to visit the country and support its economy.

“One of our tour leaders sadly passed away during the earthquake which made it more personal and linked to us, but we want to really encourage people to go to Turkey because the economy depends on travel coming back,” she told Connecting Travel's sister publication Travel Weekly.

She added: “Turkey is the second destination that Intrepid launched in 33 years ago and the business plan of Intrepid was built in Turkey so we have a very personal story with the country. We’ve raised US$150,000 so far and we want to encourage people the share the fundraiser and help as much as possible.”

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She went on to say the operator has not seen any cancellations and praised travellers for supporting the destination.

“Turkey has been doing fabulously well over the last few years and this year was meant to be one of the strongest years for us, and it’s still actually going to be,” she said. We have trips running at the moment and we haven’t seen any cancellation to existing trips," she said. "We had one trip that used to go to that area which we have deviated away from so none of our trips are impacted.”