site.bta3rd National Conference on Health Tourism Opens in Sofia

The 3rd edition of the National Conference on Health Tourism opened in Sofia's Hilton Hotel on Tuesday. It was held in the format of a business breakfast on the topic of "Health Tourism Development Plan with a Focus on Medical Tourism", and was organized by the Bulgarian Union of Balneology and SPA Tourism in partnership with the Bulgarian Hospital Association and the institutional support of the Tourism Ministry.

Attending the business breakfast were caretaker Health Minister Galya Kondeva, Deputy Tourism Minister Irena Georgieva, and BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, among others.

Kondeva said that medical tourism plays a key role in the population's health condition. Meetings with ambassadors of various countries have shown that they are interested in the provision of this type of service in Bulgaria. This country has huge natural sites and potential for development opportunities, she noted.

Georgieva said that it is already time for a fruitful inter-institutional interaction. She recalled a 2016 ordinance on balneology and spa centres in accommodation establishments, thanks to the excellent partnership with the Bulgarian Union of Balneology and SPA Tourism, which is being built upon to this day.

Valchev said that the Bulgarian News Agency is the platform for popularizing the opportunities for health tourism in Bulgaria. BTA disseminates information about the Bulgarian business free of charge, with the names of companies, hotels, resorts, and this is not advertising but news. It is extremely important that the branch find "the angle of disseminating news" on Bulgarian health tourism so that these can then be re-published, Valchev noted.

The branch can take advantage of BTA's capabilities; the agency disseminates information abroad, and at the moment BTA has 48 agreements with national news agencies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. "Our agreement is that they publish news from Bulgaria, and we publish news from their countries free of charge," he explained.

Again through BTA, there are huge opportunities to popularize in the Balkans, because the agency is the headquarters and General Secretary of the Association of Balkan News Agencies (ABNA-SE), Valchev said, specifying that the Association  unites 12 agencies.

He recalled that BTA is trying to help in formulating the messages of Bulgarian tourism in a specific plain every season. "This season, at the end of November and start of December, together with the Bulgarian Union of Balneology and SPA Tourism, we will organize a meeting between the representatives of the State, the municipalities, the business, experts from the scientific field and the media, so that we can have a clear message for every season that goes beyond the usual message: that Bulgaria has a lot of mineral water," Valchev said.