site.btaTourism Business Ready to Meet New Rating Requirements - Minister

Tourism Business Ready to Meet New Rating Requirements - Minister

Sofia, December 29 (Ekaterina Toteva and Valeria Dimitrova of BTA) - The tourism industry is ready to meet the requirements of the new ordinance on the rating of accommodation and catering establishments, Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova told BTA in an interview. The ordinance becomes effective in February 2016.

The Ministry has finalized the revisions to the Tourism Act and the Black Sea Coast Development Act. These will increase the Ministry's control functions by establishing a tourism inspectorate. They will also consolidate business and regulate the transfer of beach concessions to the Ministry, Angelkova said.

Between June and September, Bulgaria was visited by 4.2 million foreign tourists according to official statistics. Growth was registered on a number of markets: Romania by over 3 per cent, Poland over 4 per cent, Turkey 17 per cent, Macedonia over 14 per cent, Serbia 11 per cent, Moldova 21 per cent, Israel and Hungary 25 per cent each. The revenue from overnights at the hotels in the five largest Black Sea resorts in the summer of 2015 totalled some 400 million leva.

The decrease in the number of Russian tourists in the summer will be overcome, according to Angelkova. Russia is Bulgaria's fourth largest tourism market and the Ministry has the ambition to encourage Russian bookings. Currently, many countries from Kenya to Italy to Tunisia to Greece are offering alternatives to Russia, but Bulgaria has the advantage of being a sought-after destination for Russian tourists for a long time.

In January-October Bulgaria was visited by nearly 6.5 million foreign tourists, down 3.3 per cent on a year earlier. (However, the number of foreigners who came as guests increased by over 6 per cent.) Angelkova hopes that the promising winter season will make up for the year-on-year decline.

She also expects a 35 per cent increase in charter flights through Varna and Bourgas in the summer of 2016 after the meetings with TUI-Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Poland and Switzerland). Forecasts are that tourists from these markets will increase from 80,000 to about 130,000. Preliminary promising talks have been held with the TUI chapter for Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries.

Turkey also remains a very important market, which grew considerably after Bulgaria simplified the visa issuance procedure. The fact that Turkish Airlines has just increased its Istanbul-Sofia flights from 14 to 18 will increase the number of passengers by 25 per cent, Angelkova said.

The Tourism Ministry has succeeded in rescuing EU funding for its major projects for advertising Bulgaria, absorbing about 17 million leva. The Ministry has already been included as a direct beneficiary under a procedure that envisages providing institutional support to the Ministry for activities enhancing the capacity of SMEs in tourism. Five million euro are available for it in 2016 under Operational Programme Innovations and Competitiveness.

The Ministry has submitted a project proposal under LIFE Programme's Environment and Resource Efficiency priority area. The Ministry has also submitted a project worth 63,000 euro for technical assistance to enable it to perform its functions as joint coordinator under Priority Axis 3 of the Danube Strategy. Project proposals are under preparation which will apply for financing under the cross border cooperation programmes, Angelkova said.

Bulgaria continued participating in the major travel fairs and was advertised at 35 international and five national exhibitions. The first online register of tourist attractions featuring more than 3,300 sites was developed jointly with the municipalities and has proved to be very useful. Eight new cultural and historical destinations across the country were developed to promote this type of tourism.

Summing up, Angelkova said 2015 was not a bad year since Bulgaria was unanimously elected vice president of the UN World Tourism Organization at its 21st General Assembly in Colombia.