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Bulgaria: Tourism on a Roll

2006-10-04   |  www.Focus-Fen.net, Article by Georgi Iliev, 20th June 2006

Bulgaria faces key choices on its path to becoming a major tourist destination.

Tourism is on a roll in Bulgaria. For the last several years, the country’s tourist industry has seen double-digit growth and now accounts for 16 percent of GDP. Bulgaria is trying to claim its share of the global stream of tourists – but to do so, it will need to tackle the consequences of earlier development.

AN UPWARD TREND

Until the demise of communism in 1989, Bulgaria was a preferred holiday destination for Eastern Europeans seeking sun and the warm weather in seaside towns. With the collapse of communist regimes across the region, that tourism also collapsed. Citizens of the former Eastern bloc wanted to visit places beyond their reach under the old system, and the Bulgarian government lacked the know-how to effectively advertise the country in a market-driven economy.
But today, Bulgaria appears to be on the right track.
The country has come to understand the importance of marketing its tourist sites and has become a regular at major tourism fairs worldwide. In March 2006, Bulgaria presented itself at ITB Berlin, the world’s largest such event. In April, several Bulgarian tour operators participated in the Beijing International Travel and Tourism Market, where Bulgaria was declared an official tourist destination by the Chinese authorities. And in May, Bulgaria’s tourist offerings were on display at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) in Dubai. Traffic on Bulgaria’s official tourism site (www.bulgariatravel.org) has been steadily climbing.
“Tourism is often influenced by fashion trends. Currently, the trend is Balkan tourism and Bulgaria should jump at the opportunity,” Sonia Aleksieva of the Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association told a tourism conference in early June.
Bulgaria’s marketing campaign seems to be bearing fruit: Bulgaria is now on the menu of many major tour operators around the world.
But marketing isn’t the whole story: the country’s tourism industry also needs to invest in its infrastructure. The online accommodation booking system TIRS.net, launched in 2003 and developing rapidly since, now allows 24-hour access to hotel reservations and other tourist services.
The National Statistics Institute reported that over 4 million foreign tourists visited Bulgaria in 2005, while the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) predicts growth of 6.3 percent this year and 4.3 percent annually for the 2007-2016 period. Bulgarian tourism is expected to generate $6.73 billion this year, accounting for 16 percent of GDP and 400,000 jobs, almost 14 percent of total employment.
The WWTC report ranks Bulgaria’s travel and tourism economy 68th out of 174 countries by absolute size.
Where tourism in Bulgaria once simply meant beach holidays on its 400-kilometer Black Sea coast, attractions today include world-class ski resorts; over 1,600 mineral springs and spa resorts; numerous opportunities for agri-tourism; and thousands of historical and cultural sites, including nine UNESCO world heritage sites. (Among these the old city of Nessebar with its stunning pre-Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance art; and the Kazanlak and Sveshtari tombs, examples of the unique Thracian culture that flourished in Bulgarian lands from the third to the fifth century B.C..)

CHALLENGES

Despite the encouraging statistics, Bulgaria’s tourism industry also faces challenges – for example, over-development of coastal resorts, poor transport infrastructure to some inland tourist sites, lack of qualified staff, and environmental issues.
Bulgaria’s main Black Sea resorts are Golden Sands, Albena, and Sunny Beach. These have always lacked the peace and quiet of smaller resorts, but the situation is far worse today as they’ve effectively merged with smaller, neighboring sites to form a mega-resort, stretching for miles along the coast. Golden sands has over 100,000 beds and Sunny Beach over 120,000. To put that in perspective: most Bulgarian cities would be able to squeeze their entire populations into either one of them.
Despite the lessons in over-development learned in other countries – Spain being the classic case – Bulgaria seems unable or unwilling to confront these mega-projects. Current regulations state seaside hotels must offer eight to 12 square meters of beach space per tourist, but this is a fiction in all but a few resorts on the northernmost and least-developed parts of the coast.
Some observers believe the market will mend what laws cannot. Mega-hotel projects may well become history as more and more investors focus on projects of a different kind, such as holiday complexes of low-rise buildings located in parks.
Indeed, Bulgaria is a country of stunning natural, cultural, and historical wealth. It features a fascinating diversity of sites to visit. Luckily, the peculiarities of the previous regime and the location of some of the tourist sites (near the border with Turkey and Greece, in areas that used to be restricted-access) have meant some of the most intriguing mountain sites are unspoiled. However, this very remoteness also leads to a big problem that Bulgaria will need to tackle – poor road infrastructure.
While the government has recognized the problem, it lacks the funds to do much about it. International programs can only complement domestic financing, not supplant it.
Roads to the ancient Thracian city of Perperikon, located in the eastern Rhodopi mountains outside the town of Kardzhali, and to the largest Thracian temple in the village of Starosel in central Bulgaria, have recently been upgraded – but many more roads have not, especially in the mountainous regions that host some of the country’s most spectacular architectural, historical, and natural sites. “Bulgaria has the potential to attract up to 10-12 million tourists per year but this is achievable only after the road infrastructure is improved,” Blagoj Ragin, chair of the Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association, told the Kapital newspaper. “We have to follow the examples of Croatia, Slovakia, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain who invested in their infrastructure and became popular destinations.”
In addition to poor transport links, the quality of service in many resorts also plagues Bulgaria’s tourism industry – much more so than the quality of accommodation. Most older hotels in the country were privatized a decade ago and have since been renovated, while almost all of the newly-built hotels meet international standards and rating requirements. But few hotel owners understand the importance of investing in staff through training. Sometimes even top hotels lack staff fluent in foreign languages – a problem compounded by Bulgaria’s use of the Cyrillic alphabet, which can make life difficult for foreign visitors.
So far, infrastructure problems have not seemed to bother real estate buyers. In fact, recent years have seen a boom in real estate deals in Bulgaria – especially in mountainous regions with an intact environment. Real estate prices in some areas of Bulgaria are still a fraction of those for similar properties in Western Europe, attracting hordes of foreign investors (as well as people who simply want to acquire a second home).
The village of Mindia, near the city of Veliko Tarnovo, is on its way to becoming the largest British colony in Bulgaria. Some 40 British families have already bought houses in the village, lured by beautiful landscapes and clean air. Despite constantly rising prices, investors keep flocking in; Bulgaria’s expected EU entry in January 2007 or 2008 provides investors with additional security, and the value of their property is set to increase further still.

DEVELOPMENT AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Despite a focus on quality offerings, Bulgarian tourism is mostly mass tourism. Seaside visitors account for the better part of tourists in the country and for almost 80 percent of revenue. But in addition to the higher yields involved in quality tourism, another factor is slowly pushing the country away from its past approach to tourism: environmental degradation.
The overcrowded sea and mountain resorts have already damaged their environments. At Bansko, Bulgaria’s most rapidly developing ski resort, erosion from new slopes threatens to upset the local ecological balance. The other major ski resorts – Borovetz and Pamporovo – also suffer from short-sighted construction projects.
The Bulgarian government understands the importance of developing more environmentally-friendly tourism, but relatively little has been done. A national strategy for eco-tourism was adopted in 2004 but there is no overall tourism strategy of which it could form part. The struggle for more sustainable forms of tourism, in the meantime, is being carried forward by organizations like the Bulgarian Association of Alternative Tourism (BAAT), which currently has 90 members including non-governmental organizations, regional tourism clubs, family hotels, and tour operators.
Another driving force for change is Bulgaria’s forthcoming EU accession, which means it will have to adopt and implement EU tourism standards. As a first step, Bulgaria has scrapped the system of charging domestic and international visitors different fees. But more important measures will have to follow: development of tourism sites and infrastructure, improved quality of service, and better marketing of the destinations – all with the overall goal of turning Bulgaria into a model of sustainable tourism.
Bulgaria’s tourism industry faces challenges, some of them quite serious. But the country’s natural, cultural, and historical heritage as well as its location make Bulgaria a tourism destination to watch.
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