In recent years, municipalities in Turkey have started to show great interest in recreational projects developed with the goal of helping citizens to stay away from unhealthy habits like smoking and alcohol, adopt a more active life style, and to emphasize values like being harmony with family and society. And as a reflection of this trend, municipalities have started to make significant investments in attraction and recreational facilities with theme park concepts to improve the life quality of their residents. Organized by Tureks Uluslararası Fuarcılık ATRAX, the only specialized exhibition of the Turkish attractions and recreation industry, aims to contribute to the development of the 12 billion USD worth Turkish attractions industry by hosting numerous projects. Also, with the “Shining Star Awards” Competition, municipalities that make investments in the recreational projects are evaluated and rewarded based on certain criteria.
Bringing together, the world’s leading attractions facility investors, municipality officers, game and equipment producers and owners of touristic facilities, The International Amusement –Attraction, Park-Recreation Industry and Services Exhibition- ATRAX 2016 is getting ready to host the players of the attractions industry including municipal parks, hotel attraction areas, theme parks and shopping mall attraction areas. With municipalities bringing to life a large number of attraction and recreational projects last year, there’s been increase in the industry. And as a result of this, ATRAX hosted much higher number of mayors from all over Turkey compared to last year. In addition to procurement delegations from Turkey, this year ATRAX will be visited by procurement teams from Turkic Republics as it is the only specialized exhibition of the sector in the region.
Istanbul is the leader in Theme Parks
Recreations which gets increasingly important in social live parallel to the level of development of a country, comprises a variety of activities such as amusement, sports, arts and cultural activities. Municipalities wishing to offer innovative solutions to their residents to meet their amusement and recreational needs and to increase the quality of life of people of every age, have recently started developing big attractions and recreational areas comprising theme parks, sports fields, children’s game areas, parks, museums, hobby gardens, event and festival areas, and ice-skating ring. This big transition in both cities and districts continues to be the driving force behind the amusement-attractions, parks-recreations industry in Turkey. And Istanbul is followed by Ankara, Kayseri and Gaziantep in terms of number of theme parks.
This Year’s Theme at ATRAX: “Sportive Cities are More Fun”
This year’s theme at ATRAX, which grows every year with new projects, will be “Sportive Cities are More Fun”. As the recreational projects developed usually feature work-out and gym equipment as well, this year ATRAX will be hosting companies with such products in their product lines as well as municipalities that place such equipment in their parks too. With this year’s concept, the exhibition has already started attracting municipalities.