site.btaTravel Boom in Bulgaria Expected for Easter

A boom in travel in Bulgaria is expected this Easter, Rumen Draganov, director of the Institute for Analysis and Forecasting of the Information Environment in Tourism, predicted in an interview with BTA. The reason is due to the fact that once every five years, like now, the orthodox Easter is celebrated in the month of May, which also covers the holidays of St. George (May 6) and of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius and the Bulgarian alphabet (May 24). May has been gathering momentum from the influx of foreign tourists, attracted by the beautiful weather; the first guests have already arrived at Bulgaria’s seaside resorts, and April is still under the sign of the winter season with full mountain resorts. The political maelstrom around the caretaker government and the upcoming European elections are not the focus of most Bulgarians who are already planning their summer holidays, and the attractive offers for holidays in guest houses, spa and city hotels are already running out. Overnight stays this Easter will be in the range of BGN 60-250 per person.

Over a million trips are expected in Bulgaria.

In the first ten days of May it is expected that there will be more than one million trips in Bulgaria. In comparison, in the years when Easter is marked at the beginning or in the middle of April, there is a break in the cycle of opening of hotels at the seaside and in other regions of the country, because practically tourism in Bulgaria starts after the middle of June. For this reason, expectations are also for a strong boost of the summer season, which on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast will start this year in mid-May. “In general, we expect this travel intensity to remain strong for the whole of May, which in turn will lead to a boost for the summer season itself, because there is a change in the booking conjuncture in Bulgaria's main markets,” Draganov said, referring to the UK and Germany.

Most of the trips will be of Bulgarian citizens because of the opportunity to merge the holidays. For Easter alone, foreign visits to Bulgaria will exceed 80,000. For the whole month of May, the visits of foreigners to Bulgaria are expected to exceed 800,000, and the visits of Bulgarians to the country for this period will be about 1.5 million, mostly around May 24, the expert said.