Soner Dursun

Soner Dursun is the founder of Turkey Your Way, and in his own words he is “a bit of everything” here. He has spent fifteen years in Turkish tourism. For ten of them he ran hotels in Istanbul as general manager: two years in Beyoğlu, five and a half in Ortaköy and a year and a half in Beşiktaş. Alongside the hotels, he has planned trips across Türkiye for fifteen years, so he knows a journey from both sides: the reception desk and the road.

He started Turkey Your Way with one aim: every guest who comes to Türkiye should find every need met, without a single problem. A trip should be shaped around the people who take it, not squeezed into a program printed months before. That is why we have no fixed departures and no group buses. Every journey begins with a conversation, and the plan follows the guest.

Soner lives in Istanbul, but his hometown is Görele, in Giresun on the Black Sea coast. His family still lives there, and when the hazelnut harvest starts in early August, guests who want to see it are welcome at their table. His favorite place in Türkiye, though, is Cappadocia. Ask him where to eat in Istanbul and he will send you across the water to Metet Közde Döner in Kuzguncuk, for charcoal-grilled döner on one of the prettiest streets of the Asian side.

Away from work, he is a football fan who follows almost every other sport too, and he swims whenever he can. He describes himself as a visionary who loves to manage and a host at heart, happiest when a guest is happy. Today he reads the requests that come in, shapes routes with the team and chooses the guides, drivers and places we work with. When something matters to a guest, it usually crosses his desk.