This week: Small Bulgarian town has become a magnet for digital nomads, sports ticket seller is kicking goals for travel professionals, e-wallets are opening across Malaysia and Airbnb cops a big fine in Italy.
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Move over, Bali: Bansko is where the nomads are roaming
Set at the base of the Pirin Mountains in Bulgaria, Bansko has emerged as one of the world’s most popular remote working hubs.
Its appeal has been driven by the week-long Bansko Nomad Fest, the world’s largest annual celebration of digital nomad life, an event that attracts more than 700 entrepreneurs and freelancers to the small town in south-west Bulgaria,
According to online resource Nomad List, the town is the world’s “most-consistently growing remote work hub” of the last five years, eclipsing nomad favourites such as Tallinn, Lisbon, Barcelona and the sunny enclaves of Bali and the Canary Islands.
Bansko is home to more than 300 remote workers in any given month, with the population surging during ski season. It has all the attributes that attract digital nomads: Cheap rents and reasonable day-to-day living costs, and welcoming visas for nomads.
“What really sets Bansko apart is how laid-back, friendly, and welcoming the community is here,” Camille Poire, a French marketing manager, told BBC Travel.
Coming soon will be the development of an abandoned Communist-era hotel in the nearby forest into a communal residential space for digital nomads. It is planned to have 200 units, a swimming pool and co-working spaces.
A solution to foil the ticket scammers
MyTicketPro has launched a sports ticketing solution giving travel professionals access to verified live ticket inventory for North American sports events, including basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer.
Global uniform pricing and instant digital confirmations will be available to platform users via myticketpro.com.
Focus group research found the primary concern travel professionals shared was lack of digital access to verified tickets at competitive prices.
“MyTicketPro represents a new standard in tourism sports ticketing and is built upon a software solution I am proud to have developed and tested in the market over the past 15 years,” said Jonathan Zuk, founder and president MyTicketPro and Amadeo Travel.
Luisa Mendoza, founder & CEO MyTicketPro and Global Tourism, Sports & Entertainment (GTSE) said colleagues across the tourism industry have been wary of selling sports due to past experiences with fraudulent online platforms, illegal brokers and scams.
“I’m so grateful to introduce trust into the equation thanks to my relationships with executives at world-renowned sports teams,” she said.
“MyTicketPro’s unique value is in its ability to automate transactions, increase travel pros’ capacity to sell sports at scale and generate shared economic returns, resulting in increased satisfaction for us all.”
The proprietary software that powers both MyTicketPro and Amadeo is connected to OTAs and regional tourism markets worldwide.
Worldwide, new fan bases are emerging for North American sports due to streaming, foreign investment, and games hosted abroad.
E-wallet shopping in Malaysia just became easier
Travellers from eight nations with Alipay+ supported e-wallets can now shop more easily in Malaysia thanks to a collaboration between PayNet and Ant Group’s Alipay+.
The collaboration means travellers with Alipay+ supported wallets from Alipay (China), AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR), HelloMoney by AUB (Philippines), Hipay (Mongolia), MPay (Macau SAR), Naver Pay (Japan), Toss Pay (South Korea) and TrueMoney (Thailand), can travel cashless to Malaysia and make digital payments by scanning PayNet’s DuitNow QR at its network of more than 1.8 million merchant touchpoints throughout the country.
DuitNow QR is the National QR Standard operated by PayNet, which enables participating merchants to accept real-time payments from customers of participating banks and e-wallets in Malaysia, as well as in other connected countries with a single unified QR code.
More Alipay+ payment partners are in the pipeline and will be progressively enabled in Malaysia.
Asia Pacific drives Amadeus uplift
Bookings in the Amadeus GDS increased 12.7%, to 112.5 million, in the third quarter, a period that saw “progressive strengthening of the travel industry”, according to Amadeus president and CEO, Luis Maroto.
Amadeus noted that air traffic recovery in the third quarter was at “a milder pace” compared with earlier quarters this year. Air distribution revenue increased 16.4 %, to 667.1 million euros (US$714.3m) , boosted by a 3.3% increase in revenue per booking.
For the first nine months of 2023, Amadeus reported 348 million total bookings, an increase of 15.7% year-over-year and 78% of the 447 million air bookings reported in the first nine months of 2019.
The Asia Pacific region has had the sharpest growth for air distribution during the first nine months of the year, up 75.3% year-over-year. The next highest growth region was Western Europe, where are bookings were up 15.7%.
Airbnb cops a whack in Italy
An Italian judge has ordered the seizure of €779.5 million (US$835.5m) from short-term rental giant Airbnb, alleging tax evasion.
Prosecutors say the firm failed to collect a tax from landlords on around €3.7bn of rental income.
Landlords in Italy are required to pay a 21% tax on their earnings, but in
2022, Airbnb challenged the law, claiming that Italy’s requirements on taxation contravened the European Union’s principle of freedom to provide services across the 27-country bloc.
The EU’s top court later ruled that Airbnb should abide by the requirements.
MATTA’s token gesture
The Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) has come up with a novel way of promoting its ‘Sustainable Malaysia Initiative’ at the World Travel Market in London.
In collaboration with Tourism Malaysia, MATTA asked British wildlife artist Rachel Gray to produce one large format of the Malaysian tiger, a recognised endangered species.
This portrait, using technology, will be converted to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which will be auctioned for sale later in the year.
The proceeds from the auction will go towards supporting sustainable tourism at the Royal Belum State Park in the Malaysian state of Perak and will also help to sustain the indigenous communities that live within the park.
