Bulgaria is one of the alternative tourist destinations after the vicious terrorist attacks in Tunisia that led to landslide cancellations. Holidays in Bulgaria and in Tunisia are comparable in terms of cost and though rerouting tourists is possible technically, in reality it is a difficult thing to accomplish as it is now high season, said for Radio Bulgaria Kalin Draganov from the Association of Bulgarian Tour Operators and Travel Agents, ABTTA.

“What we are expecting to happen after the cancellations in Tunisia, is to have the vacancies on charter flights to Bulgaria filled up more easily. But most west European tour operators have filled their vacancies for the high season long ago, so we cannot expect much rerouting of tourists from Tunisia to Bulgaria.”

The reason is in the organization of bookings and sales on the wholesale tourist market which takes planning, applications and advance payment of accommodation.

“The contingents and the charter programmes were contracted last year,” Kalin Draganov goes on to say. “Corrections depending on the bookings are done by the leading European tour operators who worked on our market in January. At this time, no one could reroute airplanes from Germany or from Holland to Bulgaria because of cancellations in Tunisia.”

Tour operators are not very optimistic about the tourist season which is now at its height. According to data of the National Statistical Institute in 2014 more than 4.5 million tourists visited Bulgaria, with the greatest number coming from Germany, Romania and Greece.

“This year we are having a certain rise on the British and the German market,” Draganov comments. But on the Dutch market for example, there is a drop; there is a drop also on the Russian market, as a great many of the companies that offered tourist services in Bulgaria went under and Russian tourists prefer not to make reservations with tour operators. On the other hand there are restrictions on Russian government officials traveling to the countries of the EU. The drop in the number of Russian tourists is quite evident, no one could deny it exists. Yet 300,000 Russians have real estate in Bulgaria so their coming to this country is a sure thing.

But Russian nationals coming to Bulgaria as home owners do not count as tourists by Eurostat criteria. Observers say that in June there were around 30 Russian planes landing at Bourgas airport every day – the real estate owned by Russian nationals is mostly in the region of Bourgas.

English version: Milena Daynova