摘要：The economic return of the tourism industry is increasing day by day. Destinations that want to increase their share of this increasing economic return want to attract potential tourists by diversifying the tourism services that they offer. In this context, destinations develop and implement special-interest tourism policies such as dark tourism, gastronomy tourism, ecological tourism, balloon tourism, or casino tourism. In this context, the aim of the study is to reveal the positive and negative effects on tourism of the closure of casinos in Turkey, Turkey’s tourism potential within the existing casinos industry, the problems that may arise by allowing casino tourism, and the solutions. The main focus of this study is the casino gaming industry, which was allowed to be opened in Turkey in 1983 and closed after 1998. For this purpose, data were obtained through in-depth interviews with ten hotel operators. According to the results, the closure of casinos in Turkey had negative effects and Turkey has significant casino tourism potential. The creation of a pilot touristic artificial casino city is proposed in which entry and exits are made by foreign passport and can be followed with the latest systems.
