150 flights to Bulgaria’s Bourgas planned for July 2020 cancelled in a single day
A total of 150 flights to Bourgas Airport that had been booked for July 2020 had been cancelled in a single day this week, the city’s mayor Dimitar Nikolov said.
He said that one of the main aircraft operators that had planned to start flights to and from Bourgas on July 1 had postponed until July 15.
“The announced charter programme at Bourgas Airport, scheduled for June 15 and 16, has been postponed for July 25-26, while there is no guarantee that the flights will take place even then,” Nikolov said, according to the Bourgas municipality website.
There were a large number of cancellations or postponements of flights scheduled for June from Poland and Germany, major source countries for tourists coming to Bourgas and the region, he said.
Nikolov said that all this alarming data was the result of the national data announced about new coronavirus, directly affecting the tourist flow in Bourgas “even though a city is not a source of infection and manages to remain a safe area”.
“This makes our commitment even greater – to exercise strict control over all measures, to locate the infection as much as possible and to prove with a large-scale (testing) study that our region is safe,” Nikolov said.
A report by Bulgarian National Television said that in Bulgaria’s largest Black Sea coast city Varna, hotels reported 20 per cent occupancy.
Daniela Stoeva of the Association of Bulgarian Tour Operators and Tourism Agencies said that since the beginning of March, tour operators had generated zero revenue.
“Without more serious financial assistance in the form of interest-free deferred loans or additional grants than the one currently offered, I doubt that much of the business can overcome the crisis,” Stoeva said.
(Photo: Vadim Zhivotovsky)
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