Editorial

The Evolving Summer Holiday

Not so long ago the streets of Bulgaria’s towns and cities were deserted in early August as the masses took their annual holidays. The country was not unique in having an “August close down’” period; Italy was very similar and indeed, having everyone on holiday at the same time made commercial sense. As the fall of communism (?) kicked in and we entered the 90’s, the hangover locally of being told when you could go and holiday and to where, whilst not now in force, still persisted indirectly and even by choice. The result: the capital Sofia was akin to a ghost town early August and other towns and cities were the same. How times change and here we are now in what is a totally different world in regards to how people both take their holidays and indeed where they take those holidays.

The holiday habits of a lifetime as cited above didn’t alter a great deal through the 1990’s, the only exception being that a small number of people could both afford and were able to travel to the odd visa free destination e.g. Cyprus, Tunisia and Malta. That aside, it was very much business as usual and that meant the Black Sea as far as holidays were concerned. The first leap towards change took place in 2001 when the Greeks, realising they had a huge source market close by, allowed Bulgarians to enter without the need for a visa. This also was the catalyst for Bulgarians to start to realise you couldn’t book your summer holidays in June; a notion that seemed bewildering at first but gradually the realisation arose that you needed to book your Greece holidays early to get what you want; a whole new cultural change. We know of several aspiring Tour Operators who learned the hard way that contracting accommodation in Greece in May and June was done not for the forthcoming summer, but for the one after.

As the sands, pardon the pun, started to shift as to where people took holidays, the Black Sea was still the dominant destination, be this for financial reasons or for the fear of change, or indeed for not having a passport! When the country joined the EU and visa free travel came along, a whole new world started to appear. It wasn’t just the fact that people could travel to the UK, France or Spain etc., it was that they could travel 365 days of the year and not just in August: work permitting. What should be noted however is that in the next years and even decade immediately after joining the European Union, it was less the “summer holiday’” habits that changed dramatically but travel to new countries often were taken “’as well as’’ a summer holiday and came in the form of “City Breaks”, the annual pilgrimage to the Black Sea still largely prevailed.

It is the last decade and perhaps co-incidentally (or not) post covid, that the whole momentum has moved to and where overseas summer holiday become the norm. There is no doubt that today, more people have more disposable income than ever and allied to this, the ease of travel and the means to book travel, be that flights or hotel, means that more and more people are comfortable in booking their own thing and have the ability to do this; this also includes having a credit or debit card. The mention of Covid is interesting because it was during Covid that local Tour Operators became creative and started operating charter flights to places Bulgarians would never have dreamed of travelling to e.g., Zanzibar, Dominican Republic and Maldives to name but a few. The success of these perhaps wetted the appetite of people who, post Covid, realised a whole new world was out there and that it was easily accessible.

Nowadays charters to Turkey are as frequent as a Number 111 bus and the likes of Ryanair and Wizz now also provide the seat capacity to holiday destinations like Skiathos, Crete, Sicily, Mallorca, Alicante and Malaga. Add this to other driveable destinations and it’s a whole new world of holidays. What is also new is when people are taking these holidays and it’s not always August.

As the heatwave hit the country in early July, the streets of the capital Sofia, whilst not exactly deserted, were noticeably quieter than usual. Parking was far easier and journey times reduced. Drawing the conclusion that the reason for this was because many people were already on holiday is hard to substantiate; but it likely to be true. As people’s work routines have evolved over the past couple of decades, business’s can no longer close totally and thus staff have to take their holidays at differing periods, this of course can give people the choice of when it’s convenient for them to take their holiday as opposed to being told when and where they can go. Additionally, people will have realised that taking holidays at the Peak time of end July/early August is more expensive so why join the masses and pay more when you can get better value for money by holidaying outside of this period! People across Europe think the same hence many destinations have summer tourists from May to October, particularly those tourists who are not influenced by school holidays. Whilst on this particular subject of when people take their holidays and where they can get the best value for money, the issue the Bulgaria seaside has is that the season is short – no matter how it’s dressed up. Mid end of June to early September is realistically the length and breadth of its earning potential and this was no doubt historically set by the old communistic holiday rituals. This is far too short when compared with rivals like Greece and Spain although the weather also plays its part in influencing peoples holiday choices.

The world is changing faster than ever, not always for the best, but people having a greater choice of when and where they holiday and where they can get the best value for money, is part of the evolution process and there is little doubt that the summer holiday has definitely evolved for many people.

Mark Thomas

Airlines & Ethics

At Long Last

The much-vaunted European EES (Entry Exit System) is to finally kick off on the 12^th October this year, some two years late, with a phased introduction across 29 European countries. Countries can actually decide themselves when to implement the process so long as it is introduced within a six-month time frame. In short, the system will capture biometric data such as fingerprints and facial images of non-Eu nationals travelling in the EU as well as capturing all their travel movements. It will also erase the need for individual passports to be stamped.

The second phase of the project can also be entitled the profit generating scheme and this is the ETIAS; the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, which to operate, requires the EES to be in operation beforehand! This is little more than a Visa for Non-Eu nationals and of course.

Onward & Upward

The Operators of Sofia Airport have announced the opening of a tender for the design and construction of a new Terminal 3 and modernisation of the existing Terminal 2. The new Terminal will be 60,000sqM in size and connect to Terminal 2. The existing Terminal 2 is some 72,000 SqM for comparison.

At the end of the project, the airport will increase its passenger handling capacity from 7 million to 20 million passengers per annum. Just where the extra 13 million passengers will come from is a valid question but it sounds good on the PR front.

SAS Snapped Up

Air France-KLM is to take a majority ownership of the Scandinavian Airline SAS. The Air France – KLM stake will rise to 60.5% with the Danish Government maintaining 26.4% of the shares. The PR spin behind the move is that the new stake will allow the airline financial breathing space and allow it to expand. The commercial thinking behind the move may also be that a triple home hub strategy of using Amsterdam Paris CDG and Copenhagen will allow them to compete better with the ever-expanding Lufthansa Group.

It’s Baltic Up North

Just as Air France-KLM spread their influence ( see above), Lufthansa has been given the go ahead by the German competition authority to acquire a minority stake in AirBaltic. The initial investment will see Lufthansa take a 10% stake, the word “initial’’ is key to what might happen further down the road.

Lufthansa and AirBaltic recently extended their wet lease agreement for three more years beyond 2025 which will see 21 of AirBaltic’s new A220-300 aircraft deployed to various Lufthansa hubs. Indeed, Air Baltic are already a familiar sight at Sofia airport operating Lufthansa flights.

New Airport Bus

Sofia Airport is to get a night bus after the local council agreed to provide round the clock transport to and from the city centre to both Sofia airport terminals. Additionally, the two lines currently servicing the airport will be merged with daytime buses running every 12 minutes.

Night buses to any major airport makes a lot of sense. In the case of Sofia Airport, flights depart anytime from 5.00am and arriving flights operate until around 2.30am. If the airport operators also plan to have 20m passengers using the airport, then that would indicate real 24/7 operations. Local residents may have something to say about that however.

Bags of Dosh

It probably comes as no secret that the frontline terriers that are the Ryanair staff manning the boarding gates, are incentivised to grab as much money they can by sussing out passengers whose carry-on board bags are 1cm et al larger than they should be. The revenue the airline and indeed other similar airlines makes from such acts should not be underestimated and whilst its true many passengers flagrantly test the rules, there is often a fine margin between what is and what is not allowed e.g., does this include the wheels!

What also does not help is the fact that airlines can all have their own sizing of bags they will allow on board, perhaps the thinking thus is passengers should get multiple bags depending on which airline they will use next. Sic.

Back to the Ryanair staff and they currently get 1.50 Euro for each oversize bag they spot and are able to make an on-the-spot charge to the traveller which can be up to 75 Euro extra to the airline. Ryanair are considering increasing this fee from the 1.50 to an as yet unspecified amount.

Ryanair allows free carry-on bags that can measure up to 40cm x 20cm x 25cm but EU laws will soon standardise this sizing for all airlines to 40cm x 30cm x 20cm.

Just to mention, Ryanair made a pre-tax profit of 820 m Euro for the period April – June up from 360 m Euro the previous year. Incentives clearly work.

EU’s Fluid Scanners

The EU has put an end to the 100ml liquids rule in carry ons at airports. The rule was due to be scrapped last summer but at the last moment the EU decided that for “’technical reasons’ it would be postponed. There is a caveat however; the rule only applies to those airports with advanced C3 scanners in place and not all airports currently have these. Additionally, it is not mandatory for airports to implement such scanners and where this applies, the old 100ml rule applies.

Whilst many airports have had such scanners in place for a while, the cost of them can be a deciding factor in whether they are adopted or not. London Heathrow claims the full implementation of these scanners will cost around 1.2 Billion Euro!

 Equally, this move whilst obviously a positive in making travel less of a hassle, can easily see people flying from point A to point B where airport A has the scanners but B does not, hence during the outward leg passengers will have different rules to that on their return. The same confusion can also arrive where passengers transit through an airport and are required to re-scan their carry ons again.

In the Balance

June saw the visits to Bulgaria by non-residents decline by 4.8% year on year to 748,512. Visitors from other EU countries accounted for 448,319 of these visits whilst visitors from other European countries totalled 267,185.

The largest source market was Romania with 155,392 visitors followed by Poland with 65,667 and 57,088 from Germany.

This shortfall may well be recovered as the summer moves on and no doubt the historic habit of making the current seem better than the past will ensue. On the other hand, early reports from the coast indicates that a lot of accommodation is untaken when this is not usually the case. We don’t want to say ‘’we told you so’’ when it comes to the possible scenarios local tourism will face when the impact of massive price rises filters its way through, but you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to foresee that.

Economic Reality

The sense that travel might be flattening out post covid is reflected in the local IATA figures for the first half of 2025 which shows that whilst the actual value of sales paid to airlines locally increased by 1.8%, a fraction under the regional average, the actual numbers of tickets issued decreased by 5.63%, the regional average showing a decrease of 4.11%.

The bottom line of all this is summarised by prices up and tickets down.

Caveat; the figures do not include those of Low-Cost Airlines such as Ryanair and Wizz Air who each play a huge part in the transportation of passengers. However, the figures are year v year and measuring like with like, so bananas are being compared with bananas.

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