Aside from the “will it or will it not open” saga surrounding the building of Sofia’s new (and impressive) airport terminal complex, there is probably little else that has caught the public’s attention than the mere mention of the words “Bulgaria and low-cost carriers”.

It is assumed by many that when such creatures as low-cost carriers arrive en masse on our shores, we shall all be able to travel throughout Europe at the same price as a bus ticket to Kaspichan. The advertising hype churned out by the silkily smooth marketing departments of these new breed of airlines take great joy in advertising seats for 50 euro or even one euro; of course discreetly omitting the 80 euro or whatever in spurious taxes and the x per cent merchant fee charge for the obligatory use of the credit card as a means of payment and of course if you want to take a suitcase – ah!…that too may be extra.

While the marketing behind many of these low-cost carriers is much akin to a smoke and mirrors facade, we should not view these new carriers as an alternative type of travel. Nor from the countries’ perspective should we compare or contrast them with the traditional airlines that have been plying the skies for decades. Rather they should be viewed as, well, quite simply just another airline in the mix.

Why? The answer is that as time has gone by, there has been a blurring of what exactly the difference is between a low-cost carrier and a traditional airline. Today it is almost impossible to differentiate who charges for travelling with baggage and who does not, who serves food on board a flight and who does not, who has the best on-board service and finally (and perhaps most importantly) who indeed has the lowest fares!

The bottom line behind whatever type of airline one chooses to fly here is the more the merrier. It’s not the low-cost carriers that will open the doors for even cheaper travel. It’s competition that will achieve this objective.

The country, for better or for worse, is becoming dependent on the tourist industry’s contribution to GDP, with certain parts of the country owing their new-found prosperity to the country’s meteoric rise into European public awareness. So both the country and certain regions care little about who, in airline terms, actually flies here as long as they arrive in ever-increasing numbers.

There is every likelihood that this year we will see even more flights arriving at Sofia, Bourgas and Varna; more flights from established names, more flights from new names and more flights from reincarnated names. To explain the last-mentioned, an example is Thomsonfly, which is the new name of the airline owned by UK Tui, formerly known as Thomson Holidays, whose charter airline was called Britannia. Keeping pace with the world, the airline re-invented itself as a hybrid mix of low-cost and charter operation. An even further example of the blurring of the skies and there are many more such examples!

The airports at Bourgas and Varna, which, despite the miracles they perform each year in terms of passengers handled and whose number is similar to those passing through Sofia Airport, never seem to shake off their label as secondary or seasonal airports. There can be no doubt about their success and they are most certainly the catalyst in the economic boom taking place along the Black Sea area.

Which leads to the question: what if secondary airports were to open up elsewhere? The media has already reported that there will be a tender for the concessions at Plovdiv, Rousse, Stara Zagrora and Gorna Oryahovitsa, as well as possibly at Gotse Delchev, whose runway is still under the control of the Ministry of Defence.

Europe is littered with airports that were unknown among the public a decade ago. In France, Germany, Poland, Italy et al, secondary, previously unheard of airports serve the ever-increasing number of new startup airlines that in turn use these airports because of both their low operational costs (landing fees) and often because they are squeezed out of major city airports. The airlines both satisfy a demand, such as in Poland, or create a demand such as that created in France where for flights to rural airports has massively stimulated demand for second homes from particularly the British market and thus provide an economic spin-off for the communities generally.

Thus, it is not difficult to see why the Government appears to be keen to exploit the possibilities that the airports of Rousse, Gorna Oryahovitsa, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora could offer. Rousse, indeed, could figure as an alternative to Bucharest now that both countries are in the EU, in a way similar to how Bratislava and Vienna square up to each other.

It might be that the time is nigh for those entrepreneurs willing to take a punt and having the resources to invest in one of the aforementioned airports. The landscape is indeed changing.

Mark Thomas is managing director of Jamadvice HRG. Jamadvice Travel has been a market leader in Bulgaria for 15 years and is a member of the HRG worldwide network.