[size=55:2at2r93n]novinite 05 October 2010

Bulgaria's Poor Infrastructure Putts Off Foreign Travellers

Alternative tourism is the only way to make Bulgaria a year-round tourist destination and attract visitors outside the active summer and winter season, expert Stoyan Mihaylov, says.

Stoyanov spoke as representative of a company hired by the Bulgarian Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism, to carry out a research about attitudes of foreign travelers to SPA, cultural, and rural tourism.

The poll was conducted among 9 000 foreigners, who visited Bulgaria in the summer, but also practiced the above mentioned types of tourism.

Overall results show Bulgaria is attractive to visitors from abroad and they are pretty much satisfied with their vacation, but the majority of the respondents have pointed out poor infrastructure, heavy traffic and lack of adequate information as significant problems.

According to the poll, foreign travels chose culture tourism over Bulgaria's many historical sites, SPA over the affordable prices and rural tourism over the beautiful nature.

Bulgaria's main competitors are, as expected, neighboring Greece, Turkey and Romania, the results showed.

Men prefer culture tourism and nature walks, the latter being also a top choice of younger holidaymakers while women and older people prefer SPA services.

Bulgaria has the most positive image among visitors from Romania, the Ukraine, Serbia and the Czech Republic while those from Sweden, the UK, Germany, Turkey and Greece were satisfied but critical at the same time.

More than half of those polled have already been to Bulgaria before.

"
heavy traffic"
??? They must be joking - if I can do Balchik - Silistra in 1hr 13 mins that would tend to indicate very light traffic. Doubt I could do 130km around London in that sort of time, more like 13 hours.

Regards, George.

I think Bulgaria does have a lot to offer the tourist as far as culture and history is concened but I do believe that the main problem is the infrastructure as said lets face it when travelling around Bulgaria it isn't easy and the signs on the road are just one of the problems to deal with let alone the condition of the country as a whole.