Leading hoteliers from all over the world meet in the Greek capital of Athens, where one of the most authoritative events in the field of tourism is held IDEEA - a forum for Central and Eastern Europe, which is part of Bench events - organizer of the largest professional events in the hotel industry in Europe.
"Since March, there has been a rapid recovery in urban tourism, led by the return of business travel and individual leisure travel, followed by the holding of events, most of which have been postponed for the past 2 years. However, at the Balkans level we are still around 20% below the employment levels of 2019. The big ones missing are group accommodation and Asian markets. We hope for their gradual recovery in the next 2-3 years. This was stated by Zhivko Ivanov from "Galaxy Investment Group" in the "Future of Urban Tourism" panel, which is part of the IDEEA program.
Ivanov noted that in an urban environment, budget hotels did best during the Covid crisis.
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"Currently, after the opening of international markets, we are seeing the fastest recovery in the high-end segment of city hotels, followed by budget hotels and lastly the traditional four-star segment," he added.
Zhivko Ivanov pointed out that the tourism industry will gradually recover. The risks it faces are: government regulations on the airline industry, Covid policies in Asian markets, recovery of business travel.
"I believe that travel is already part of people's necessary living minimum. An essential part is that the Balkans have a huge potential to be in Europe and at the same time to be unknown to the European markets. This gives us the opportunity to attract city tourists who want to discover new destinations with close flights within the EU," said Ivanov.
Regarding the events, he added that the new business models of remote work and the refusal of employees to return to the offices create a niche to attract IT companies that need to create team spirit, which is no longer happening in the office, but in hotels , in halls - through team activities, games, corporate concerts and many other team building activities.
Source: BgTourism