Phuket keeps opening new doors for European visitors, and the latest one is in Sofia. A new seasonal direct flight from Bulgaria has just started landing at Phuket International Airport, and tourism officials are using it to court the whole Balkan market — not just for beach weeks, but for longer, higher-spending stays.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) welcomed the first GullivAir flight from Sofia on Friday, November 6. The flight, GBG701, touched down at Phuket at 6:55am after leaving Sofia the previous afternoon, and the seasonal service now runs once a week on an Airbus A330-200 with 240 seats. The Bulgarian airline, founded in 2020, is also planning a Sofia–Bangkok route, though no start date has been announced yet.
The flight is only half the push. Alongside it, twelve Romanian tour operators have been touring Phuket, Krabi and Phang Nga from November 2 to 10 on a familiarisation trip organised by the TAT Prague office. Their programme has taken in the Phi Phi Islands, the Similans, James Bond Island, the floating village of Koh Panyi and Phuket Old Town, plus a cocktail workshop at the Chalong Bay rum distillery. Business meetings matched the operators with local tourism companies in Krabi on November 4 and at OZO Phuket on November 9.
The numbers behind the effort: more than 6.26 million Europeans visited Thailand in the first ten months of this year, including 97,655 from the Balkans — up 5.42% on last year. Bulgarian arrivals rose 8.07% to 15,029, and Romanian arrivals rose 5.40% to 41,758. TAT says Phuket is a leading pick for these visitors, who are drawn by beaches, marine trips, community-based tourism and soft adventure, and the campaign fits its wider strategy of adding air links while building longer-stay programmes for visitors who spend more.
For anyone living in Phuket, another weekly wide-body from Europe is good news in the simplest way: more seats, more visitors in the quieter corners of the season, and more reasons for the island's small operators to be on that itinerary list.
Full story: The Phuket News — Phuket targets Balkan tourists with new Bulgaria flight
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