(CNN) -- With 10 more countries about to swell the ranks of the EU come May 1, the one business sector likely to get a boost is the travel industry -- both for leisure and business.
National and low-budget airlines expect traffic to surge on routes eastwards; new routes will also provide fresh links to Russia and Central Asia.
According to the Financial Times newspaper, airlines are confident traffic will increase initially by 20 percent or more a year on routes to the new EU nations.
By next month easyJet starts a service from London Luton to Budapest, Lufthansa will fly between Bratislava and Munich -- to name but two.
There is also no mistaking how ambitious Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta are to attract tourists and business travelers alike to their hotels, airports, cafes and conference centers.
Prague, Warsaw and Budapest look set to become more prominent as hubs for connecting Eastern European flights and Latvia hopes visitor numbers will grow from two million to as many as eight million in the next four years.
And a recent report published by holiday firm Thomson also predicts that Slovakia and cities in Slovenia will be among the top tourist destinations in 20 years' time.
Eastern Europe's homegrown budget airlines are benefitting.
Air Polonia and Bratislava-based airline, SkyEurope are trying to shore up their positions before the May 1 expansion and Hungary's Wizz Air plans to take off later this year.
"Low-cost airlines are not wasting any time at all in launching new services," Simon Calder of the Independent newspaper told CNN.
"On May 1, you are going to see departures to Ljubljana in Slovenia on easyJet (and)...the Maltese airline, Air Malta, flying between Britain and Sicily -- simply because they can."
But no-frills airlines are striking a cautious note in the move eastwards, and are waiting to see what demand is like before rolling out full services to new destinations.
"We are starting off with daily flights, (which) means we can test the market. We can see how popular they are, with a view to increasing those services in the future," says Samanatha Day of easyJet.
Lack of knowledge
One complaint, from Eva Staltmane of the Latvian Tourism Board in London, is that most Western Europeans do not even know where her country is.
"Very often people think that Latvia is somewhere in the Balkans. It is probably that Baltics and Balkans sound kind of similar," she explains.
"This is very frustrating, a couple of years ago when the Balkans was not a very safe area to go, it affected us very much."
There is also a belief in the travel industry that Western Europeans are suffering from "beach boredom" and are looking for fresh ideas when it comes to vacations.
"I think there are going to be a lot of early adopters who will be heading off this summer, to explore new opportunities -- particularly on the Baltic Sea and in Estonia and Latvia," says Calder.
"The cities will also benefit simply because we have explored places like Milan and Barcelona and Paris and so on, and it is time to move on to more exotic places like Budapest and Ljubljana."
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