TURSAB License #14316 — GoldenSunsetTour Official Verification

TURSAB — Türkiye Seyahat Acentaları Birliği, the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies — is the statutory licensing and self-regulatory body for the Turkish travel industry, established under Law No. 1618 on Travel Agencies and the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies. Every legally operating travel agency in Turkey is required to hold an active TURSAB license; without one, an organisation may not sell travel products, issue vouchers, or invoice cruises and tours in Turkish lira.

TURSAB issues three license tiers:

• A Group — full travel agency. Authorised to sell all travel products, both domestic and international, including cruises, hotels, transfers, packages, and yacht charters. This is our tier.
• B Group — transit and IATA ticketing only.
• C Group — specialised, narrower scope (for example domestic-only sea tourism).

Holding an A Group license matters for booking confidence in four concrete ways: (1) mandatory güvence sigortası liability insurance protects guest deposits; (2) TURSAB operates a binding dispute- resolution channel between guests and agencies; (3) every transaction must be backed by a written, KDV-compliant invoice; and (4) the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, together with TURSAB, can sanction or revoke licenses for non-compliance — which gives the license real teeth as a trust signal.

Every TURSAB licensed agency is required to maintain güvence sigortası — a mandatory liability insurance policy underwritten by an approved Turkish insurer. The minimum coverage tier scales with the license group (A Group carries the highest minimum), and the policy certificate is filed with TURSAB as a condition of keeping the license active.

In practice, the insurance covers: refund failures caused by agency insolvency or service non-delivery; accident liability for incidents occurring during the operator's product (cruise, transfer, charter); last-minute cancellation outside the guest's control such as mechanical failure or unsafe weather; and guest repatriation where relevant.

If a dispute cannot be resolved directly with us, guests can file a formal complaint via TURSAB's consumer-protection channel at tursab.org.tr — the association is legally empowered to mediate, sanction member agencies, and in severe cases revoke the operating license.

The fastest manual verification path takes about ninety seconds and uses only public TURSAB tools. Step one: open tursab.org.tr/acenta-arama in a separate tab. The page is the official Acente Arama (agency search) form maintained by the association — there is no login wall and no payment gate.

Step two: paste 14316 into the Belge No (license number) field and submit. The result row that matches our license will read MERYEM YILDIZ TURIZM SEYAHAT ACENTASI as the legal entity, with an Active status flag, A Group classification, and an Istanbul Fatih address that matches the one shown on every voucher we issue.

Step three: cross-reference the result against the official TURSAB roster PDF linked at the top of this page. The roster lists every A Group licensed agency in Turkey and is regenerated monthly by the association. Finding the same license number, legal entity, and city in both the live search and the roster PDF confirms the agency is in good standing on the day you check.

For finance teams that need a written attestation rather than a live lookup, we can email the TURSAB membership certificate, the güvence sigortası insurance certificate, and the most recent tax registration document as a single onboarding pack — usually within one business day of the request. The pack is structured to match the supplier-vetting checklists used by multinational corporate finance departments.

Every booking is invoiced under our registered legal entity MERYEM YILDIZ TURIZM SEYAHAT ACENTASI on a KDV-compliant e-arşiv document. The invoice can be issued as a single charter line or split across multiple cost centres — catering, decoration, transfer, photography, AV — when the finance team needs line-by-line allocation.

For EU-based companies, our invoices include the structured fields required by the EU 13th Directive scheme that governs foreign-business VAT refunds on Turkish supplier purchases. The standard issue window is twenty-four hours after the cruise; same-day issuance is available on request for groups that need the document at the boarding gate. Re-issues and splits are processed within one business day without additional charge.

Every document references our TURSAB license #14316 and the legal entity name so vouchers and invoices can be presented at customs, corporate finance, or insurance contexts without ambiguity. Document originals are retained for ten years on our side in line with Turkish commercial law.

Meryem Yildiz Travel has held TURSAB A Group status continuously since 2001 — that is 24+ years of unbroken operation in Istanbul's Bosphorus cruise and private yacht charter market, across two generations of leadership. Over that span the operating group has served 45,000+ guests through its direct-booking Bosphorus cruise platform.

Our captains and on-board crew operate in English, Turkish, German, and French, and every vessel under our flag carries current Liman Başkanlığı (port-authority) safety certification, life-jacket inventory for maximum manifest, and an annual maintenance survey on file. Fleet documents, safety equipment lists, and crew certifications are available for inspection by chartering parties on request.