[size=55:13w8kf31]Sofia echo

Bulgaria’s tourism tales

Summer tourism in Bulgaria this year is set either for an upswing or a downturn, depending on to whom you listen.

Seaside resorts face all the now-familiar challenges. Excessive construction, inconsistent service, competition from Greece and Turkey, the impact of the economic crisis that – whatever the official optimism of the Government, continues to sap the disposable income of Bulgarians – as well as other challenges, such as the changes to the system of the tax and tourism and even whether there will again be power cuts this summer.

According to the Economy, Energy and Tourism Ministry, the Bulgarian coast this summer will draw 12 per cent more tourists than last year. The Varna Chamber of Tourism predicts a 15 per cent increase.

But a gloomier picture was sketched by Lyubomir Pankovski, a member of the management board of the Bulgarian Association of Tourism Agencies, who said that the increased cost of packages because of the change to the tax system would reduce numbers and industry profits.

On patrol

In co-operation with foreign embassies, the Interior Ministry will be continuing the practice of bringing in foreign police services to work with local law enforcement at resorts.

Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told a news conference at the start of May that last winter season, at the initiative of the UK and Irish embassies, additional measures were taken to guarantee the safety of foreign tourists at winter resorts. Greek police worked with their counterparts at winter resorts, which led to fewer complaints from tourists, Tsvetanov said, according to a report by Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).

This year will again see Romanian police working jointly with their Bulgarian counterparts.

Ahead of the summer season, Tsvetanov met ambassadors of European countries to discuss co-operation.

Norwegian ambassador Tove Skarstein said that the group had presented to Tsvetanov proposals concerning the safety of their citizens, BNR said.

Going local

According to the Economy, Energy and Tourism Ministry, in 2010 Bulgarians spent about 2.7 billion Euro on tourism, of which just less than 75 per cent was spent in Bulgaria.

Domestic tourism on the Black Sea is said, officially, to have increased in 2010 by about two per cent and partly as a result of the continuing impact of the crisis, is expected to increase again this summer.

Bulgarian media said on May 4 that a poll commissioned by the ministry found that 30 per cent of Bulgarians intended spending their 2011 summer holidays in the country. However, by no means is the intention to head for the seaside. According to Bulgarian travel agencies quoted by local media, much of this domestic tourism will take the form of spa weekends, eco and rural tourism.

Promotion

Long-awaited and arguably overdue, Bulgaria launched a large-scale international television advertising promotion campaign, which ran from September 2010 until March.

The ministry said that the advertisements, themed "
Bulgaria – Magic Lives Here"
were seen by more than 137 million people around the world. The spots were shown on Euro-news, Euro-sport, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, half of the advertisements being flighted in prime time. The campaign cost 3.7 million Euro.

Further, recent months saw foreign television crews in Bulgaria working on their own material, including teams from National Geographic and Euro-news.

More work on promoting tourism in Bulgaria is in the pipeline, going by a report in Dnevnik in late April.

The Economy Ministry has announced a competition for print material to promote Bulgaria at international exhibitions, Dnevnik said.

The two million leva project calls for bidders to produce 840 000 regional and thematic leaflets, 228 000 thousand posters, 385 000 leaflets, guidebooks, maps, paper bags and other printed material, to be translated into various languages. The funding is to come from the European Union’s regional development programme.

According to the Dnevnik report, candidates that want to take part in the competition must pay a 17 900 leva guarantee and submit documentation by June 1. Competition rules require candidates to have had turnovers of at least 1.79 million leva over the past three years along with relevant experience.

The report said that the main criterion for selecting a winner would be price but other criteria would include the vision and originality of ideas.

Meanwhile, website bulgariatravel.org reportedly is set for a revamp, among other steps.

Efforts

Reportedly, Bulgaria’s Black Sea resorts are seeking to spruce themselves up in various ways ahead of the season.

Sunny Beach is preparing a new transport system to ease traffic congestion, and was seeking to make deals with taxi companies to exercise better control and damp down exorbitant pricing.

The traffic management improvement scheme would include making several streets one-way, the use of a "
blue zone"
paid parking system and providing additional parking areas – as well as options to buy parking vouchers for a week, 10 days, a month or three months, according to a report in Dnevnik.

Sunny Beach intended signing contracts with taxi companies that will serve the summer resort, specifying maximum tariffs.

The resort also intended, by early summer, to complete the planting of new trees and palms.

Nessebur municipality was working on religious tourism opportunities and was to ban the sale of paintings and other goods in the ancient churches of the Old Town, Dnevnik said.

Sozopol, meanwhile, hopes to continue to use the supposed relics of John the Baptist, found on an island near the town in summer 2010, as a tourist drawcard.

Unresolved

Some serious issues remained unresolved, however.

A pipeline from a water treatment at Golden Sands must be extended from its current 700m to 2000m into the sea. While Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s Government announced earlier that it had negotiated a seven million leva interest-free loan for Varna municipality to complete the project, work is being delayed because of shortcomings in completing paperwork.

So too, notwithstanding some episodes elsewhere of demolition of illegal constructions, Dnevnik said at the end of April that temporary structures continued to block alleys in Sunny Beach.

Maria Mihaeleva of Sunny Beach was quoted as saying: "
We have made incredible efforts to get rid of the structures on land owned by the company. It is no secret, however, that trying to clear the complex of ugly structures and temporary installations, we touch on very serious economic interests, and getting into such a war is not ‘healthy’."


In a separate report, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) visited the Bourgas Tourism Fair at the end of April, an event that brings together tour operators, hoteliers and restaurateurs from across the country. For the first time in the 10 years that the fair has been held, the Vocational School of Tourism in Bourgas took part in the fair, and BNT interviewed some of the young people trained at the school who were seeking tourism industry jobs this summer.

Among the youngsters, including those who spoke about the experience that they had gained so far at restaurants and hotels, one said: "
We learn on the job"
. Somehow, it was a sentence emblematic of much about Bulgaria’s tourism industry.