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BERLIN, Mar 12 (AFP): European holiday companies attending a major trade fair here insisted that bird flu has not dented bookings for the key summer period.
Far from being downbeat about the virus, tour operators said the spread across Europe of the highly pathogenic form of H5N1 bird flu that can kill humans had actually helped their cause, because it was not confined to a single country.
"There is bird flu in France, Germany and Austria, and, anyway, birds fly from one country to another," said Roberto di Marco, who was promoting holiday villages in the southern Italian region of Calabria at the ITB event in Berlin which finished Sunday.
The H5N1 strain has been found in wild birds in Calabria, but di Marco said it had not scared off potential visitors. In fact, holidaymakers had not even asked about it.
"It's the consumption of poultry that is falling sharply, not tourism," he said.
It was the same upbeat story from representatives of other parts of southern Europe.
Costas Georgidakis, who was promoting holidays in the Peloponnese in southern Greece, said there had been "no panic and no cancellations" and Martin Misir, who organises tours and cruises around the Croatian coast, reported "no effect for the time being".
France, which has been the world's most visited country for several years, attracting some 75 million tourists annually, also seems to be unaffected by the virus, even though it became the first country in Europe to see it spread to poultry.
"People are not fixated on it," said Helene Vignot, from the tourist office of Dignes-les-Bains in the eternally popular holiday destination of Provence.
Yet Turkey, where four people in the rural east died after coming into contact with infected birds in January, has been hit hard, with bookings for summer holidays there down by 25 to 30 per cent compared with last year.
Turkey appears to be an isolated case. Spain for example has even seen bookings go up by around five per cent, according to Europe's biggest holiday company, TUI.
But as more and more countries are infected with bird flu, it becomes less and less likely that tourists will switch to another destination.
Greece, Italy, France and Croatia have all reported infections and alternative destinations such as Germany are currently battling outbreaks.
Germany recorded the first case of an infected mammal in Europe, a cat, although scientists have played down fears that the danger to humans has risen as a result.
Faced with the rapid spread of the virus among wild birds, the only course of action for holidaymakers seems to be to convince themselves that there is no danger, or that nowhere is totally free from the virus.
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