Travel

Property investors are firmly focused on apartments in central Athens and tourism properties such as holiday homes and hotels, according to a National Bank of Greece report.

Turkish Foreign Ministry has issued a travel advisory for citizens traveling to France warning them against ongoing violent protests in Paris and across the country.

Innovative property startup Blueground aims to lease out some 50,000 furnished apartments in 50 cities around the world by 2023.

This is a particularly ambitious target given that the Greek company currently manages some 1,500 properties totaling 1.3 million square meters in nine cities: Athens, Dubai, Istanbul, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.

The largest hotel chain in Eastern Europe - the Orbis group, will open their first hotel in Plovdiv. At the moment it runs through franchise sites in Sofia - ibis to the airport and Novotel on Tsarigradsko shosse Boulevard, reports money.bg

Short-term property leasing may be associated with furnished apartments and holiday homes through online platforms such as Airbnb and HomeAway, but the service is fast expanding into the office market as well, where needs are equally large and require flexible solutions.

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has extended the state of emergency at its southern and northern borders until June 2019 in an effort to reduce illegal border crossings by migrants.

Parliament approved the measure for the borders with Greece and Serbia because of increased migratory flows.

An EU-funded project is developing a way to speed up traffic at the EU's external borders and ramp up security using an automated border-control system that will put travellers to the test using lie-detecting avatars. It is introducing advanced analytics and risk-based management at border controls.

Airbnb is playing an increasingly dominant role in the Greek housing market. The owners of more than 126,000 apartments and houses in our southern neighbor rent them through the platform.

British holiday company Thomas Cook Group Plc plans to open a further 20 own-brand hotels by the end of 2019 including six in Spain, four in Greece and three in Turkey, as it responds to competition from online travel agencies.

Johannes Peterlik, the EU's Secretary-General for Foreign Affairs, told media in Sarajevo on Thursday that migrants and refugees currently in Bosnia must be told that they are trying to take the wrong path to the EU.