Restaurants in some Turkish holiday towns are sitting half-empty in peak tourist season, as many locals find it’s cheaper to holiday in neighboring Greece than stay and eat in one of their own country’s world-famous resorts.
Angry citizens have taken to social media to share their bills, including the equivalent of $640 for food and drinks for five people in Bodrum and $30 for five scoops of ice cream in Cesme. Meanwhile from Mediterranean Greek islands just a few kilometers away, their fellow Turks boast they’re paying far less than prices at home.
“There’s a huge difference between the service and product quality, as well as prices here and there,” said Murat Yavuz, a retired Turkish banker who regularly visits Greece. “Restaurants here have used inflation as a pretext to push up prices.”
Restaurant and hotel prices rose by an average 91% in June from a year earlier, topping already eye-watering headline inflation of 71.6%. The sector constitutes a third of the services economy that the central bank has highlighted as a particular cause of concern in its fight against spiraling prices.
How does inflation in Turkish Lira cause the Dollar price equivalent to go up so much? Should the Lira not be devaluing against the Dollar at a rate similar to its inflation?
If not, doesn’t that actually indicate a strong Turkish economy?
Just anecdotally, but Hungarian prices went way up above the inflation that the exchange rates changing would justify. There are a few explanations why it happened in Hungary.
One is prices are getting “unanchored” and are easier to gouge. Someone used to a loaf of bread costing 400 in local currency will buy one loaf for 1200 as easily as 800. It’s basically nobody knows by habit what the prices are any more.
One other explanation goes that the uncertainties of the economy get baked in to the price. So if the bread was made for 200, but is now made for 400, the trader will price based on the assumption the input prices might double again, pushing the risk to the customer.
Yet another explanation is that since prices went up, fewer people buy the same goods, so prices must go up again to have businesses stay afloat. So basically there is an inverse economies of scale effect happening.
Finally, in these countries it happens very frequently that parallel economies emerge, and societal divides widen. Point is, there is a group of people who get paid by foreign companies in foreign currency, and they earn much better than most that have been affected by inflation, and more and more of the economy is targeting them exclusively.
IDK really, as on the one hand I’m not an economist, only pointing it out that this is not the only place and time this happened.
Inflation is not the only thing that goes into currency valuation. Future expectation also comes into play. Basically the situation is expected to get worse
Wouldn’t assuming the Lira will drop more mean people would pay less for it though? So would make it worth less?
Those are the social media rage bait prices. Lots of places have prices 1/3 or less
Edit: That’s not to say it’s cheap, but there are cheaper (and still great!) options than the quoted amount
Edit 2: If you’re downvoting, please also tell me how $128 meals and $6 ice cream are in any way the norm.