“Turkey kind of came to us by accident,” Martin explains. “My wife Suzanne and I wanted to buy a holiday home somewhere and couldn’t afford anything worthwhile in Spain or Portugal. After scouring the Internet and having recently spoken to someone who came to Turkey every year for their holidays, we decided to have a look. It was love at first sight. Suzanne and I originally bought a holiday home in Alanya in 2004 and moved here full time in March 2005. We now live in Belek, where we’re very happy, especially me as it satisfies my passion for golf with so many fantastic courses.”

So what do they like about the Antalya region? “We love it for many reasons,” he underlines. “Apart from the weather -- which is obvious and gives us an outdoor lifestyle for at least nine months of the year -- we’ve learnt to enjoy going to the market for fruit and veg, which always tastes superb. Suzanne used to hate tomatoes in the UK but now eats them all the time. As she says, ‘They just taste different here.’ Like golf plays a big part in my life, walking plays a big part in hers, and every week she is off up into the mountains or to other natural beauty spots with her friends. She’s amazed by the history and ruins she passes; to her it’s almost as if they’re undiscovered or forgotten. We also have Aspendos Theater on our doorstep, which is 2,000 years old and is still in use as a summer concert venue. Suzanne is a Reiki and crystal therapy practitioner and has made friends with other people who practice alternative treatments. All of them -- and I include myself in this -- believe Turkey to be a very spiritual place. This is hard to describe and is more of an internal feeling, but since we came here, we’ve had a great many lovely and yet strange coincidences happen to us.”

“We both find the people are very friendly and almost too helpful,” he points out. “That can, at times, be a nuisance as everybody wants to help, whether they understand our needs or not, never mind whether they have the knowledge to help. But this a quirk in the character of the people in general, and while at times we find this frustrating, we do prefer this to the UK ‘can’t do’ attitude, which is aggravating. To us there’s a very big difference between these two.”

“Do we miss anything about the UK? Not a great deal,” he explains. “It is nice to go back for short visits and to see friends, but usually we have had enough after a few days and look forward to returning to our magical paradise -- although it would be even better if Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and Weetabix were readily available here.”

Breaking new ground to promote Turkey

Martin likes Turkey so much that he’s set up a Web site to promote the country. “The idea for OverseasInfo.tv came from my own travel experiences, both for business and pleasure,” he explains, adding: “It was fueled by the move towards video on the net. I decided to start this and test it in the Antalya region, in particular for Alanya and Belek, for which I have a great affinity, to help both destinations promote themselves to holidaymakers and travelers from overseas.”

“At the moment, the main USP [unique selling point] of the site is that all the content is video-led and tourist-focused,” he goes on. “It will be open to and affordable for all sizes of business to advertise and be featured. This will allow people to see -- and feel -- more about Turkey than they could from a brochure. Whenever we have first-time visitors, all of them are astonished at what they see when they come, as it is way beyond what they expected. I have had great feedback from people who have seen the site, which has been encouraging, and month after month our visitor numbers worldwide are growing. I am sure many people discount Turkey as a destination due to ignorance. Hopefully, my Web site will give people a better understanding of and insight into Turkey, which will motivate them to seriously consider here as ‘early choice’ destination for their holidays. In time we will expand the concept to cover other regions and cities in Turkey and eventually into other countries. We’re currently looking for a partner in Ýstanbul to pick up on the city being a European Capital of Culture 2010.”

Antalya links course on par with Royal St. George’s

“Belek is the golf capital of Turkey and is a very important attraction for tourism,” Martin underlines. “Although there are plans to build a number of new golf courses around Turkey, it is unlikely that there will be the concentration in numbers anywhere else, nor will the weather allow for 52 weeks of play. Golf has grown substantially in this area, especially over the last five years, and there are now around 15 courses all within 10 minutes’ drive of each other. There is also a new course that opened about a year ago which is 20 minutes or so away and is the very first links course in Turkey. In fact, I believe there are only around 300 links courses in the world, some of which are in the UK and are used for hosting the British Open, such as Troon, Turnberry, Muirfield, Lytham St. Annes and Royal St. George’s. All the Belek golf courses were designed and built by well-known course architects, and two have been named after very famous golfers: Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie. There are also rumors that two more will be built in the area: one by Jack Nicklaus and one by José María Olazábal. New golf courses are also designed to be sympathetic to the environment and to accommodate local wildlife. Here it is very common to see red squirrels and tortoises on the courses, as well as frogs and reptiles. And the bird life is a ‘twitchers’ paradise.”

So how well is Belek doing as a golf holiday destination? “It’s been slow to exploit its position as a major golf destination, but word of mouth and the quality of its courses plus the incredible offers aligned with all-inclusive hotels are making this a destination of choice for Europeans, who are finding Spain and Portugal very expensive. The sad thing, however, is the money is not coming into the country as it should be as most of the packages are sold by European tour operators who drive the price down to increase their profits. The golf courses as businesses have not yet grasped how to market themselves... they are suffering from the law of diminishing returns on what should be a very lucrative market. Golf in Belek does have a great future, but the owners need to be careful they don’t price themselves out of the market...”

So how do he and Suzanne envisage their future? “There is so much to see and do here, and one of our goals is to drive round Turkey; so far we have only scratched the surface,” he highlights. “That said, both of us love to travel to new and exciting countries, and there is an awful lot of the world out there still waiting for us. One of my dreams is to use the expansion of OverseasInfo.tv Ltd. into other countries as a reason to visit them, especially if it’s somewhere we haven’t been before. Obviously from Ýstanbul, we can fly to many parts of the world, but links through London are more attractive to us... I can see us maybe at some point in the future spending a bit more time back in London, although I would not envisage us giving up Turkey as our main residence and therefore our main home. We never talk about ‘our place’ or ‘our villa’ in Turkey but always about ‘our home’ in Turkey. It will take an awful lot to change that.”