Türkiye as an Inbound Destination: The Structure and Evolution of B2B Distribution and the Role of the Destination Management Company

Türkiye has grown into one of the largest inbound tourism destinations in the world, yet the business-to-business machinery that moves millions of foreign visitors through the country each year is rarely described in a single account. This paper sets out the structure of the inbound distribution system that connects a traveller in a source market to a bed, a guide, and a coach in Türkiye, and it examines the specific position of the destination management company within that system. Drawing on the tourism distribution literature and on the operational experience of running a licensed destination management company in Istanbul, the paper describes the principal channels, foreign tour operators and wholesalers, online travel agencies and bedbanks, and the ground handlers and destination management companies that assemble and deliver the product on the ground. It then analyses the structural forces reshaping these channels, in particular digital intermediation, dynamic packaging, and the diversification of source markets, and asks how the destination management company earns its place when technology makes disintermediation easy. The paper argues that the value of the destination management company lies less in booking transactions, which technology increasingly handles, than in contracting, local knowledge, risk absorption, and the assembly of complex itineraries that automated channels serve poorly. It closes with recommendations for operators, destination bodies, and researchers.