BTA Director General: Aim Is to Have a Practical Conversation on What We Want to Say This Winter Season

Petya Petrova

BTA Kiril Valchev (left) and Samokov Mayor Angel Dzhorgov, Samokov, December 18, 2023 (BTA Photo)

Samokov, Southwestern Bulgaria,

18.12.2023 17:47

(BTA)

The aim of the meetings that BTA holds at the start of each summer and winter tourism season is to have an honest conversation between the leadership in tourism on a state level, the local authorities, the tourist business, the experts and the news media about what we want the message for the specific season would be other than the traditional country-of-roses and country-of-sunny-beaches metaphors, BTA Director General Kirill Valchev said in his opening remarks at the meeting in the southern town of Samokov on Monday.

Titled BG TOURISM - WINTER 2023/2024, the forum is organized by BTA.

Valchev remembered the problems for Bulgarian tourism last summer in the wake of the Kakhovka dam disaster and the rumours about pollution of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. "The news media could help and they did it with the daily updated on the condition of the sea," he added. It was at the previous meeting that the issue was discussed.

BTA have held three such meetings in the past two years.

At the second meeting - which is in Bansko, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine - it transpired that due to the sanctions many countries has imposed purely practical restrictions: cutting down on the lighting, on heating, etc. "From the discussion with the tourist business, it transpired that Bulgaria has no such restrictions, and from there the message took shape naturally about a vacation without limitations," Valchev said.

He also said that at the third edition in Burgas the discussion was about growing prices and how everything was becoming more expensive. "But the discussion made it clear that Bulgaria was not going to have much higher prices: only slightly higher but for a better quality."

/NF/