Bulgarian holding Alma Tour announces its bankrupcy. Its property will be auctioned off

On September 20th Bulgarian company Alma Tour announced it's «suspending new bookings of tours» due to temporary financial difficulties. Yesterday news came out that the holding's representatives have officially filed for bankrupcy at the Sofia district court. However, one of the holding's companies which operates in Estonia – Fiji Travel Alma Tour Group – is not planning to stop working. This was announced by a member of the company's board of executives, Plamen Panajotov.

On its web site Alma Tour has announced, the money, which has been paid by clients for its services, which the company now can't deliver, «is to be returned following the neccessary submissions» while «the terms of when that's going to happen will be announced later». «In order to get your money back, we're asking you to contact the Comission for consumer rights», - the company states.

According to NewsBG, Bulgarian holding Chemimport, which includes Bulgaria Air, Central Cooperate Bank, the Armeyets insurance company and other structures, has spread the word to the country's media. Chemimport's management has explained, since 2008 Alma Tour's companies have been constantly violating the deadlines for payments and acted «financially incorrect to the national air carrier». Starting from 2011 the tour operator also began dealing incorrectly with the Central Cooperate Bank and the Armeyets insurance company. «We never talked about purchasing Alma Tour's assets or about any sort of joint efforts and at this point are not planning to», - says the holding's management, - «Chemimport has no intrest in purchasing a company which lost its prestige and abused the trust of thouasands of its clients».

As a result, in order to cover the company's depts, Alma Tour's entire real estate will be auctioned off.

Meawhile, on Friday September 23rd 240 people are supposed to travel from Varna and Burgas to St. Petersburg. It's unclear how will they be transported to Russia. On its web site Bulgaria Air has announced it's ready to return all Russian tourists from Alma Tour SPb home if they pay 120 euros for each ticket. The airline claims under Russian law these spendings will be compensated.

Bulgaria Air is wrong. According to the law «On the foundations of tourism functions» the spendings on secondary purchases of plane tickets are to be compensated only to those tourists, who traveled to Bulgary on a tour. Those, who've purchased only plane tickets, will get nothing.