Sunvil sell just one fifth of flights to Beja

Sunvil sell just one fifth of flights to Beja
30/4/2011

UK travel operator Sunvil has so far sold only one in every five seats on the weekly charter flights it scheduled for this summer between Heathrow and Beja, according to the company’s co-founder Noel Josephides.

Overall only 20 percent of the available seats have been filled.

Sunvil will carry out flights between London and the Alentejo every Sunday this summer, from 22 May until 9 October, a total of 1,029 seats over 21 weeks. Passengers will fly on a 49-seat aircraft belonging to airline BMI. This indicates that around 200 seats have been sold.

Mr. Josephides estimated that 180 people had bought a seven-night package for a holiday in the Alentejo, which Sunvil are selling for between £420 (€474) and £802 (€907), per person.

“For a new airport and a new destination, it is good”, he told Lusa News Agency during a presentation held on Wednesday by the Alentejo Tourism Board at the Portuguese Embassy in the UK.

Noel Josephides recalled a similar scenario when it launched a direct flight to the Azores, four years ago, a destination that currently attracts more than two thousand British tourists per year.

“Reservations will be made last-minute and will only gather pace after the first flight has landed and people see things are working well”, he predicted.

Sunvil’s co-founder believes the Alentejo could become to Portugal as Tuscany is to Italy.

He described the region as “A little different, not full of tourists, it has beautiful landscape, good food and a good variety of typical hotels.”

The vice-president of the Alentejo Tourism Board, Vítor Silva, is aware that the Alentejo “will never be a destination for mass tourism”, but should Sunvil’s flights fill up, it will represent at least seven thousand overnight stays, making up more than a third of the 19,000 sleepovers spent by British tourists in the region last year.

Mr. Silva affirmed that, this year, Beja Airport would only receive the flights from London but that next year it would be open to flights from operators from other countries.

Fuente: http://www.theportugalnews.com/