Editorial

A License to Charge More

More and more words or expressions enter our world these days, the majority of which border on stupidity with many originating across the pond and sadly finding their way into Europe. We have all heard about “blue sky thinking’, “’circling back”, “levelling up” and the ultimate bucket filling vomit expression of  “reaching out”. The travel and hospitality sector has also been keen to be seen as trendy with hotels in particular re-defining themselves with new words or descriptions. The first boutique hotel opened in the USA in 1981 but went under the radar for a couple of decades before its concept was found to be ideal for new wave marketing and suddenly, every new and not so new hotel liked to be referred to as “’boutique”. A boutique hotel doesn’t have a true definition but is generally considered to be one that is “small, stylish situated in a fashionable location and has less than 100 rooms. Additionally, the perception is now enhanced to assume such hotels are ‘’contemporary or minimalist and offer many lifestyle amenities whilst offering high levels of customised service that reflect the owner, designer or entrepreneur”.

Here in Bulgaria, it seemed that every hotel that opened in the post year 2000 boom branded themselves as a ‘’Boutique” hotel which, to put it mildly, was a bit of a stretch. The word was fashionable so it was used, oh yes, it also allowed a generous increase in the rates that were attempted to be charged because it was “’boutique!”

The word “small” is interesting as it does not have a specific number attached to it and thus it implies differing things to different people. Also, started to another word attached to the boutique hotel description, the word “’lifestyle”. That opens another pandoras box.

Much like the description of what a boutique hotel might be, the word Lifestyle is appearing more and more as a standalone identifier of hotels and is even being added to the hotel name. Ask 10 people what a lifestyle hotel is and you will get 11 answers. Could it refer to the spa or leisure facilities on offer, the restaurant offerings or the green credentials the hotel claims it has attained, or is it referring to the things we find in our everyday lives e.g., dishwasher, kitchen, TV, coffee machine, ironing board? In short, it has no meaning.

The definition of a lifestyle hotel and what it means is even more vague than the boutique hotel!  One definition lists a Lifestyle Hotel as one that offers a “one in a kind experience”” (though it doesn’t say what this might be), but that also keeps in mind the trend in the hospitality industry including art, culture and design. In short, it’s a Marketeers load of dribble that people buy into. Buying into something is an apt comment as the use or addition of the word “lifestyle”, in addition to it being a trendy and marketable word, also allows higher room rates to be charged! A bit like Dubai Chocolate, even though they don’t actually make chocolate in Dubai you can’t let facts get in the way of a good revenue generating marketing campaign.

Talking of revenue generating, the Greeks have found a new method that might catch on elsewhere now that City taxes and Tourist Taxes have become old fashioned and can only go so far. The Greeks have this year added a” Climate Resilience Tax”” which is a fee applied to stays in all types of accommodation, with the revenue generated from it allocated to a dedicated emergency fund for natural disasters and response preparedness. For example, a 10 Euro tax per night is added to stays in 4 star hotels between April and October, whilst for a 5 star its 15 Euros, not a small amount if you are staying for long durations and one can see the potential for this to backfire on the Greek Tourism industry.  Some 300 million Euro’s per year is expected to be raised with the new taxes and the question also begs, where does the money evaporate to if there are no disasters?

Mark Thomas

Back to the Future 2.0

Railing Around

The European Commission has opened applications for 36,000 rail travel passes for 18 year olds across Europe. The successful applicants will be able to travel across Europe for up to 30 days between July 1^st and September 30^th 2025.

Applicants have to be born between July 1^st 2006 and June 30^th 2007, be a resident from the EU and countries associated with the Erasmus programme, which also includes Iceland, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Turkey.

Atlanta Top Again

The ACI (Airports Council International) has released its annual results for 2024 with Atlanta Airport once again topping the list as the world’s busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers with 108 million during 2024. This is up from 104 million the previous year. Dubai came in second with 92 million followed by Dallas with 88 million. London Heathrow was Europe’s highest placed airport in fifth with 84 million passengers.

The world’s top 10 airports accounted for 855 million passengers or 9% of the world total. The global figures reached 9.5 billion, an increase of 9% year on year but more interestingly, 3.8% higher than 2019 pre-covid levels. The green extremists will be furious!

What should be highlighted is that the above numbers include both domestic and international passengers at the named airports and if one looks purely at international passengers then it’s a different story.

Dubai sits top of the pile when it comes to international passengers followed by London Heathrow, Seoul Incheon, Singapore Changi and Amsterdam Schiphol. Atlanta, despite its dominance in total passengers comes nowhere near the top in this category as its prime focus is domestic connectivity, as evidenced by the airports ageing terminals which might have once been state of art, but that was 40 years ago.

As the ACI statement adds, the words busiest airports are “vital arteries of trade, commerce and connectivity”. Politicians and Environmentalists take note.

Lounging Around

Vassil Levski Airport, aka “Sofia Airport” is to get a re-vamped business lounge, indeed two. SOF Connect, the Operator of the airport has signed a deal with TAV Operations Services for the building and operation of two news business lounges in Terminals 1 and 2.

The lounge in the main Terminal 2 will have 540SqM of space and 450SqM of (quote) “’lifestyle “terrace” (that magic word again) to make smokers happy, which will also have a view to the runway. It will accommodate 130 passengers at a time. Terminal 1’s offering will be 440sqM in size and cater for 125 passengers.

Two thoughts spring to mind: the first being that the airport operations were supposed to be being moved entirely to Terminal 2 in the near future and does anyone have any idea what a “’Lifestyle terrace” is (see editorial A Licence to Charge More)?

Consultants Joy Postponed

Consultants will be disappointed to hear that the European Parliament has voted to delay the rollout of its new sustainability and reporting directive. The plan has now been pushed back until 2028 and will apply to EU companies of over 5000 employees and net turnover of 1.5 billion Euros, as well as non-EU companies above this threshold. The nonsense will then be extended to small and medium sized companies in 2029.

Are we reaching the point where there will be more people involved in the planning, awarding and policing of such nonsense, than there will be people who contribute genuinely towards a GDP?

Y2K, the first modern day scam looks like it’s proving inspirational as a remuneration gathering scheme for people who have never worked a full day in producing something that people actually want.

Loving the Figures Again

The final word on the success or otherwise of the local ski season is not yet in, but the same positive noises are heard once again. For February, visitor numbers were up 3,35% whilst the revenue from them was up 7.7%; a fact that leads to the obvious conclusion that prices are getting higher.  These numbers follow on from the January numbers that revealed a 24% increase in revenue year on year.

What is noticeable from the February figures is that foreign visitor numbers are up whilst domestic ones are down. From a commercial perspective, the more foreign visitors the better as there will be more people with a larger disposable income. At the same time, with the reduced domestic numbers this may point to one of two things: that the increased cost of the resorts domestically and in particular the ski resorts, puts them out of reach of the average local person; or the domestic audience has realised there is better value for money elsewhere such as Austria and Italy!

The ski conditions in particular have been good this year for the country’s three main ski resorts and there has been the usual claims that conditions were better than rivals in the Alps, though we have not heard from anyone who skied in the Alps who could suggest where this might include.  There are hundreds indeed thousands (if you count the small local Alp resorts that are roughly the same size as our own) and the law of averages would dictate that Bansko, Borovets and Pamporovo in any given year will have better conditions than some small resort(s) in either France, Switzerland, Austria or Italy depending on where the snow has not been great. Still, it makes a good sound bite.

Back to Type

When traveling on business, its hard to strike the balance between booking too early and having to cancel or amend a booking, often something that comes with a financial penalty, or booking early enough so as not to pay exorbitant fares by leaving it until the last minute.

A recent survey carried out on people travelling for business in 2024 revealed that around 40% book travel less than 1 week before departure, 10% booked between 8 -14 days ahead and 16% between 15 – 21 days before departure. The remaining 35% booked more than 21 days ahead.

During the Covid era, due to the general uncertainty, people were most definitely booking last minute but the 2024 breakdown is pretty much the same as 2019 pre – Covid levels.

Wine in Focus

Plovdiv will play host to the 2025 UN World Tourism Global Conference on Wine Tourism in October this year. According to the UN WTO, “’this annual conference represents a unique opportunity for experts from across the wine growing field of wine tourism to work together to find concrete solutions to make tourism an enabler of the way forward towards a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient future”. Top marks in political correctness for getting the key words “sustainable and inclusive” into the PR blurb.

The conference is expected to bring together representatives from 160 countries, with the local government comment that it will “’contribute to the positive image, advertising and visibility of the country and will establish Bulgaria as a year-round destination on the world tourist (wine) map.

Indeed, there is a valid point in there as the past decade or so has seen huge momentum in the wine industry locally with numerous wineries and wine hotels to match. There is no reason why this cannot be a success as the other key ingredient, air connectivity, already exists and the relatively short distances between wineries connected by a decent motorway infrastructure provides all the ingredients to make this a success.

What has possibly hampered this progress to date is a realistic and orchestrated marketing push in this direction. Marketing generally and especially of the local tourism product is not a strong skill set, however much the truth hurts and never has been. Thus, every opportunity needs to be taken to facilitate the promotion of this sector, a sector that can offer much. Not forgetting of course that this good news story comes shortly after it was revealed that the government had reneged on a deal to play host to the World UNESCO Conference as it was “’unable” (!) to host it and instead had to pay compensation so that the prestigious and high-profile event could be moved to Paris.

UK Visa in Place

Just a reminder that the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) is now in operation and visitors from 30 European Countries are required to obtain an ETA before they travel to the UK.

The final phase of the rollout commenced April 2^nd  with travellers from Europe being added to a list of travellers from 50 other countries.

The cost of the ETA is 16 GBP and is valid for two years or until the travellers passport expires.

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