Minister Angelkova talked with executives of the Corendon tour operator and the Beautiful destinations company in London

Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova held a working meeting in London with top executives from Dutch tour operator Corendon, which has a strong presence in Benelux and owns an airline. She offers charter flights to Bourgas from Amsterdam, Maastricht and Brussels, with some of the longest summer seasons in Bulgaria with 9 flights per week. The interview took place at the 40th WTM International Tourism Exhibition in the British capital.

In the summer of 2018, over 20,000 tourists travelled to Bulgaria via Corendon, but the opportunities are much greater among families and young couples. The company proposes a joint marketing campaign for our country in Benelux and forecasts an increase of its trips to Bulgaria for the summer of 2020 to 40,000.

Minister Angelkova assured that there is potential for expanding the cooperation to other cities in our country as well as in the wings of the seasons, because the aim is to establish Bulgaria as a year-round destination.

Speaking to the representatives of the Beautiful Destinations management team, Jeremy Jonesy, CEO, and Elizabeth Linder, CEO, Minister Angelkova presented the rich potential of our country as a destination for four seasons and recalled that despite the challenges this year, very good results in the sector are reported. In the first nine months of 2019, national statistics recorded over 7.8 million foreign visits to Bulgaria, which is a decrease of only 0.8% compared to the record for tourism in 2018.

Bulgaria is becoming more and more attractive to foreign tourists not only with its well-established summer and winter vacations, but also with various offers for cultural, historical, balneo and spa, culinary, golf, adventure, eco and rural tourism, the minister emphasized. Our country is an increasingly preferred place for doing business, and especially for tourism the opportunities are extremely promising. In the spring of this year, an international forum for sustainable investment in the sector was held in our largest tourist complex in Sunny Beach. The aim was to attract the attention of leading brands in the tourism industry to the potential of Bulgaria and Southeast Europe. A second edition of the conference is to be held.

Managers from Beautiful destinations have presented their operations in a number of markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa. Of interest to them is Bulgaria, which they like very much as a route, they shared and expressed their willingness for active cooperation in the field of digital transformation, contacts with social networks, online marketing, etc. Beautiful Destinations has wealth of experience with its Egypt marketing destination campaign.

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Corendon is a leading tour operator, airline and hotel chain in the Dutch and Belgian tourist markets. Corendon Airlines flies to 45 countries and 145 airports, carrying around 2.5 million passengers annually. The airline also offers charter flights to leading European and Asian tour operators.

Beautiful destinations is a worldwide travel organization brand. The company has created the world's largest social media travel community. More than 20 million people in 180 countries contact Beautiful Destinations on various international platforms every day.