The six weekly flights to the Spanish seaside resort represent a 50 percent increase compared to last year.
By BRIAN BLONDYBarcelona Balcony311(photo credit: Courtesy)
The Tel Aviv-based travel agency, Holiday Lines, has begun flying six times a week to Barcelona from Tel Aviv for the 2010 summer travel season. It has also introduced new chartered flights, and organized tours and cruises to other desirable locations in Europe to entice Israeli travelers.The six weekly flights to the Spanish seaside resort represent a 50 percent increase in flights to the city compared to last year.There are 750 seats reserved for the company each week on the three flights – the most pre-reserved seats in the Israel industry from Tel Aviv to Barcelona.“Every year there are more and more Israelis traveling abroad to Europe,” Arnon Englender, managing director of Holiday Lines, told The Jerusalem Post.“With Holiday Lines’ further expansion of the route to Barcelona, we were given an option by the airlines to increase further the number of flights according to demand that the company is anticipating during the summer,” he said. “If demand rises, [Holiday Lines] is prepared to run additional flights accordingly.” Holiday Lines charter flights to Barcelona are operated exclusively by the Israeli airline, Sun d’Or, and the Spanish carrier, Pan-Air,with departures leaving from Tel Aviv on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, all at 9:00am. Englender said what separates Holiday Lines from the local competition is the high quality of personal service that it provides for their clients.The 11-year-old company is partly owned by El Al. It strives to build interesting travel packages and secure as many seats on flights at the lowest cost for the Israeli market.“We are a low-cost company for many things. For us it is enough to make a small profit in order to create a high volume of passengers, especially in a time when the competition is looking for a high profit,” said Englender.The company is also offering an organized tour for eight days to the region, which will include visiting all the attractions in Barcelona and also an excursion along the south of France, with packages starting from $599 per person.Holiday Lines also operates flights to many destinations in Europe suchas Berlin, Munich, Paris, Milan, Rome, Amsterdam and Verona. Inaddition to low-cost flights to Barcelona, Holiday Lines has developedvacation packages and cruises itineraries specifically suited forsingles, couples and families to Verona, Italy, the Greek Islands,Bulgaria, Turkey and Cyprus.According to Englender, it is tooearly to make predictions on how the Icelandic ash cloud across Europewill affect summer flights. Rather, Englender is suggesting patience,since it is just impossible to have concrete answers at the moment onwhat weather conditions will be.Last week, he said, “we had acharter flight return back to Israel after a few hours in the air. TheBarcelona airport (El Prat) was closed and was having manycancellations.”Holiday Lines and its summer packages can be found on the Internet at www.kavei.co.il http://www.kavei.co.il/>
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