Editorial

Accident and Design

Marketing budgets are generally there to be utilised on a “use it or lose it basis”. Whether such budgets are spent wisely or otherwise often depends on the collective ability and integrity of those employed to market a product or service wisely. In many cases budgets, to put it mildly are wasted, though that doesn’t mean to say that spending the funds wasn’t enjoyable. Think hospitality trips and cocktail parties. Without wishing to throw past local marketing execs (!) of the Travel and Hospitality industry as well as those employed by government to undertake the same function under the proverbial bus, promoting anything connected with tourism and Bulgaria in past decades was rather more miss than hit. Thinking that placing ads during the Euronews TV programme will attract people to visit Bulgaria is simply not going to happen. Sending people to Travel Exhibitions in London or Berlin etc. might have been effective in the 1980’s, but the world has changed since that period, not that some would have noticed. In those days, when overseas travel for most Bulgarian’s was simply either too expensive or was fraught with issues surrounding visas, the rare chance to see the outside world was a chance too good to miss. Also, not to be missed was the chance to go sightseeing and shopping and hence the empty desks at such exhibitions where delegates should have been promoting their wares (Bulgaria). Recent events though, one by accident (?) and one by design will hopefully show how product promotion / marketing can be significantly more effective.

Cycling has never been a big thing in Bulgaria, it was only a couple of decades ago when cycles were a definite rarity on our streets, probably as it was viewed as life threatening. That’s not to say that the sport or pastime, depending on how you viewed your use of a bicycle, has huge traction in the country compared with say the Netherlands of Belgium, but that’s not the point. The impact that launching one of Europe’s premier professional cycle races, the Giro D’Italia, in Bulgaria for the first three stages (days) not only raised levels of interest that went through the roof, the potential promotional impact it will have on the country cannot be easily quantified. Tens of thousands thronged the route from the Black Sea to Sofia and everywhere in between, however the TV presentation of it yielded potential that no promotional video could ever portray. The country’s landscapes from snow-capped mountains to lakes, coastal towns and gentle rolling countryside in between were all neatly choreographed together which left the viewer thinking that this could equally be Austria or Switzerland (though these don’t have a sea coast!). This is not Euronews, but prime time TV shown across Europe in a major sport at a major event. To repeat, the marketing value is immense.  The Spanish Island of Mallorca attracts 150,000 cyclists each year, affectionately or not so affectionately known as MAMILS (Middle Aged Men in Lycra Suits), this impact of hosting the launch of the Giro D’Italia in Bulgaria is not likely to attract even 1% of this number to our shores (the roads are generally not suitable and that ignores the car and truck drivers on them), but the seeds of awareness for other types of tourism most certainly will have been laid. This was the design.

If cycling was the ‘’design’ then the Eurovision Song Contest was the accident! The joke was always that Bulgaria will win the Football World Cup when it wins the Eurovision! Over to the footballers then.

The Eurovision Song Contest has been around since 1956 when seven countries took part in Lugano, Switzerland. In the subsequent years, the event was viewed by most people in Western Europe as something of amusement, a humorous event that no-one took seriously. However, this sentiment failed to be understood by the populations of “’new Europe” when they entered the fray in the early 90’s. The populations of most, though not all, Western countries scratched their heads at the somewhat bizarre interest the Contest was starting to gather. At the same time, another factor came into play, the LGBGT community started to harness Eurovision as a type of celebratory event. As one Eurovision presenter and popular Radio Host regularly refers, the Eurovision weekend is “the Gay Olympics””. What the event does though is generate both a lot of interest as well as a lot of revenue for the host.

The criteria for the hosting the annual Eurovision is that it is the responsibility (or choice) of the previous winner, and they can host it in their home country and in a city of their choice. Noting that Ukraine couldn’t host the event after they won it in 2022 due to its invasion by Russia. Other criteria include that the event venue must have a capacity of at least 10,000 people, a media centre for 1500 journalists, a Euro Village fan zone, lighting and equipment, sponsor spaces and it must be covered and air-conditioned. The venue also has to be in easy reach of an airport and there must be hotel accommodation for at least 2000 delegates. The actual number of potential visitors for this one event is measured in the tens of thousands as visitors travel to this event even if they don’t have tickets for the auditorium.  Whilst it is too early yet to say which city and which venue will be chosen to host the event, Sofia must be in the driving seat as all the aforementioned criteria required to stage the extravaganza are easily ticked in the capital city.

No doubt attention seekers will try earn their crust by questioning the cost required to host a Eurovision which can easily reach 40 million Euros and more. The cost of which is partly offset by payments from other European broadcasters and through commercial sponsorship. It will though be the number “”40”’ that some people will anchor onto and continue to question the logic. It’s the same people who have likely never been in business and running a country is, as we have stated previously, akin to running a business.

Mark Thomas

Summer Skies may be Grey

It’s still early days yet but buried in the B2B Travel media early this month was a report that one of Europe’s leading Tour Operators, TUI had seen a 10% fall in revenue from one of its key source markets, the UK. Connected with this news was that it was cutting seat allocations with some airline partners though at the same time maintaining seat levels via its own fleet.

What was more of interest though was the comment from the operator that it had seen a “noticeable shift” in demand away from Eastern to Western Mediterranean destinations. Additionally, any destination outside of America and the Middle East was also attracting increased interest as a holiday alternative e.g. Canada, Japan, Australia, Thailand etc. The USA is suffering due to both the fact that the Football World Cup is being hosted there this summer and prices have sky rocketed to disproportionate levels, plus the simple fact that its America and not quite the flavour of the month for many.

What this also does is emphasise the tight rope that Bulgaria’s own summer season may be walking which can’t always be attributed to domestic actions or inaction.

Italy Focus

A little nugget of information about Wizz Air that’s totally irrelevant but your knowledge may impress friends. Wizz Air’s most served country is Italy which makes up 31% of its entire flights, next comes Poland with 22%. It serves a whopping 26 airports in Italy yet only two feature in its overall top 10 destinations: Rome Fiumicino (3^rd) and Milan Malpensa (7^th).

This summer the Black Sea city of Varna will get its first ever Wizz flight to Rome which will operate throughout the summer season three times weekly.

Get There Early

From November, Ryanair will close its bag drop facility 60 minutes before departure instead of the current 40 minutes. This is due to the potential for delays at airport security and passport control connected with the introduction of new European Entry and Exit processes.

The airline says that roughly 20% of its passengers use the bag drop which equates to around 40 million passengers annually.

The big question for most will be why wait until November to introduce the new rule? The answer is that Ryanair predict it will take time before passengers become aware of the new rules and at the same time, the airline is installing more self-service bag drops to more of its airports which will speed up the bag drop process.

Getting to Grips with Rail

One of the last bastions of national protectionism appears to have short shelf life remaining; rail travel and more accurately rail operators have managed to blind side regulators and the EU for decades in order to ring fence their “own patch” and thus ignoring the concept of making booking easier and transparent for their passengers. The European Commission though appears to have the bit between its teeth and has proposed new rules making it easier for rail travellers to book complex cross border rail journeys that involve different rail operators.

Just as a recap, booking a rail journey across Europe or even from country to country often involved issuing separate tickets for each leg as the rail operators refused to operate an airline type of booking structure. The new measures seek to dispense with this stance.

The measures themselves will feature regulation designed to allow passengers to compare and buy services from multiple rail operators in a single ticket that can be purchased in one transaction via a booking platform that can either be via a rail operators own through a third-party platform.

Perhaps equally important is the protection passengers would get if they miss a connection during a multi leg journey; in the same way air passengers have protection. This would include the right to receive assistance, re-routing, reimbursement and compensation.

An additional part of the remit is new obligations will be introduced for all ticketing platforms to display all options in a fair manner and to display options based on greenhouse gas emissions where possible. This will no doubt exclude the footprint created in the manufacture and laying of thousands of miles/km’s of metal rail tracks (sic).

What’s in a Name?

Sacre Bleu, the French appear to want to get rid of France, at least when it comes to the name of national airline Air France-KLM. Moves are underfoot to bin the existing name and use a generic neutral identify similar to IAG which is the name that arose from the merger between BA and Iberia.  The project name given to the plan is “’Blue Group” though this is not expected to be the eventual name.

The move comes as Air France-KLM readies itself to absorb Scandinavian Carrier SAS into the fold plus, it is also optimistic that Portuguese Carrier TAP can be acquired though in this particular race it faces competition from Lufthansa.

Whilst IAG appeared out of BA and Iberia, it’s a debate whether having a neutral brand brings value to an airline. The Lufthansa Group comprises of several airlines including Austrian, Swiss and ITA amongst many but each have kept their individual identity. The CEO of Air France-KLM is Canadian and being North American perhaps doesn’t grasp French history, culture and nationalism quite so well. The French public may remind him in no uncertain way.

Fuel For Thought

It’s fairly boring to read about an airlines profit and especially if it’s accompanied by virtuous remarks from CEO’s etc. However, its worth noting the latest financial results from Qatar which for the year ending March 2026, saw profit reach a record 1.94 billion USD. This comes with carrying 41.8 million passengers on a fleet of 270 aircraft to 160 destinations. Indeed, orders are placed for an additional 210 new aircraft. The new aircraft will replace some of the “older” planes as well as expanding its fleet number.  Those “old” aircraft contribute to the average age of the fleet being 10 years (only!).

The obvious comment with the above is that the next years accounts won’t be so rosy as the conflict in the Middle East is increasing the operating cost of Gulf based airlines as well as restricting frequencies. Some of Qatar’s flights are now taking anything from 30 mins to 4 hours longer in duration which means they burn more (expensive) fuel. Though it’s hardly likely they will run out of fuel!

Just for the record, Qatar were operating flights to Sofia around four times weekly prior to the outbreak of hostilities at the end of February, but operations are now put on ice.

Almost Done

It’s hardly a surprise but Lufthansa has not been slow in taking almost full control over Italian national carrier ITA. Remember ITA is the phoenix airline that rose from the remnants of Alitalia. After initially taking a stake of 41% in ITA, a percentage that was almost certainly designed to appease the Italian media, population and government, the Germans have now come back to exercise its option to acquire a further 49%, taking its overall control to a conveniently round figure of 90%. The Italian Finance Ministry will retain the remaining 10%.

Italy in travel terminology is very much a major “origin and destination” market and provides the Lufthansa Group with a stronger reach in Southern Europe as well as positioning Rome as a major hub airport in the network’s operations. It is worthwhile noting that in many respects, Milan was seen as being the premier transport gateway but this assumes numbers from Milan Malpensa, Linate and Bergamo Airports which combined handled 59.5 million passenger’s last year. Rome’s two airports handled 55 million but the major airport of Fiumicino handled 55 million compared with Milan’s Malpensa which handled 31 million.

Also worth commenting on is the fact that once the share transfer takes place, the Italian Government will have little or no control over how ITA is managed. However, for the Italian population and media commentators; the ship has already sailed; at least it’s still afloat unlike the country’s old airline.

Let’s Meet In

Leading Meetings Management Platform Cvent has announced last year’s top European meetings destinations based on the 20 billion USD spent via its platform, a ranking not out of kilt with other such rankings.

The top three places remain unchanged with London once again top of the pile followed by Barcelona and Paris. Lisbon came in fourth and Paris fifth. Next came Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Munich with Vienna coming in tenth.

In North America, the top three cities were Orlando, Las Vegas and Nashville. Whilst in Asia the top three cities were Singapore, Bangkok and Sydney. For the Middle East, the top three remained the same with Dubai in top spot followed by Istanbul and Abu Dhabi.

Business To Sleep On

Owning or managing a hotel still appears to be a good business to be in despite attempts from various quarters to almost villainise the thought. At the end of the day, people want to travel and business’s want their staff to travel if it drives profit to the bottom line. Despite the latest conflict in the Middle East, hotel rates globally saw a sharp acceleration in the first quarter of this year with prices up 7.2% according to a recent survey based on 1.78 million bookings. The average room rate per night globally now stands at 175 USD compared with 154 USD a year ago.

European rates have tended to increase the most with Milan’s average rate increasing by 29% thanks to the winter Olympics which the Italian city played host to. Other European cities also saw steep rises including Stockholm with a 22.1% increase and Amsterdam with an 18.6% increase, taking their respective average rates to 195 USD and 253 USD. London, saw a modest (!) rise if 7.9% though its average rate is now a whopping 324 USD. By comparison, Paris rates jumped 11.4% and Berlin’s 15% reaching rates of 246 USD and 186 USD respectively.

Whilst many corporate business travellers have restrictions on the types of hotels they can stay in, that doesn’t seem to impact the general trend and this trend sees 5 star hotels are booked by over 12% of travellers whilst 44% stay in 4 star offerings; the average length of stay has slipped slightly from 2.5 days to 2.43 days on average which will also reflect on the amount of spend per trip.

To compliment the above data, the Marriott Group announced that their own first quarter numbers which sees their daily average rate increase by 3.1% to 187.70 USD per night which helped its revenue increase to 6.6 billion USD. One interesting fact from Marriott is that their Marriott Bonvoy Membership scheme now has a massive 283 million members.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Rival hotel group Hyatt at the same time announced that their own first quarter average rate improved by 3.2% year on year to 211.39 USD per night, in Europe this figure was 2.2% yielding an average rate of 246.07 USD. Notable also was the increased occupancy which was up 3%. The Haytt’s own loyalty programme ended the quarter with 66 million members, itself an increase of 18% on the previous year.

Michelin Guide Never Tyres

Exactly 100 years ago car drivers in France gained a new tool to help them decide where to eat: the Michelin Guide. The guide itself was not new and was first established by tyre manufacturers Michelin in the town of Clermont – Ferrand in 1900.

The idea of the first guides was well in advance of its time; 35,000 copies of the guide were given to motorists (remember the roads were not as busy as they are today) and contained roadside information including maps, repair tips, details of mechanics, hotels and restaurants across France. The objective: to encourage drivers to spend more time behind the wheel and hence wear out their tyres faster!

The guide concept gained traction as particularly restaurants realised the value of recognition. Anonymous reviews then followed and in 1926 the first Michelin stars appeared which highlighted 46 notable French fine dining establishments.

In 1931 the now familiar 1-2-3 stars was introduced with the guide publishing its criteria for its guide in 1936. For the record these are; one star – high quality cooking, worth a stop; two star – Excellent cooking worth a detour; three -star Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.

The guide today covers 28 titles in 25 countries and for those in the fine dining industry, the awarding of a star can overnight impact demand for reservations, increase prices and attract the best staff.

Tokyo has the most Michelin starred restaurants followed by Paris and Kyoto. In Hong Kong, renowned for its Michelin dining scene, the Four Seasons Hotel holds seven stars across its French, Cantonese and Italian cuisines. Frankfurt’s Seven Swans restaurant became the first vegan restaurant to receive a Michelin star in 2020.

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