site.btaBulgaria Has Central Role for Tourism in Region, Says Konrad Adenauer Foundation Director

Bulgaria has a central role for tourism in the region, as the country is important not only because of its maritime border, but also because of its strategic location, said Norbert Beckmann-Dierkes, Director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Bulgaria, on Thursday in Burgas during a conference on sustainable tourism. 

"For 30 years now, we have been organizing various events, with which we try to be useful for Bulgaria, to transfer good practices, to increase people's qualifications and development opportunities. One of the lessons we learned is that we really need to bring together experts at different levels and people who make decisions on important topics in order to make decisive steps forward in the development of tourism, to have a better connectivity and to work in a network regarding the airports: Burgas, Varna, Plovdiv, Sofia," Beckmann-Dierkes said.

"The Konrad Adenauer Foundation made a useful and pragmatic contribution not only at the state level, but also specifically in Burgas Region," emphasized Burgas Mayor Dimitar Nikolov. "Tourism is a defining industry for us, over 50,000 people are engaged in the summer months, so it is very important to create good rules for improving the quality of their work. From 2021 to 2024, Burgas Municipality has seen an increase in the number of overnight stays, and respectively, in the revenues," he added.

During the conference, Employment Agency Executive Director Smilyan Valkov pointed out that unemployment in Burgas is among the lowest in the country. He expressed the opinion that sustainability of the tourism sector can be achieved precisely through the people employed in it. He noted that the Employment Agency issued 31,000 work permits to foreign workers in 2024, of which 13,500 for seasonal work specifically in the field of tourism. Most often, permits were issued to people from Nepal, Turkiye, India and Uzbekistan.

The conference was organized by Burgas Municipality, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It gathered representatives of the national and local authorities, mayors of seaside municipalities, tour operators, as well as owners of hotels and tourist accommodations.