We will rely on tourists from neighbors

Will focus on attracting tourists from Bulgaria’s neighboring countries, because these are markets with great potential, there is no language barrier, the cultural-historical perspective we are very close.

Told Radio Focus – Varna Ivo Marinov, deputy minister of economy, energy and tourism.
According to him, has all the prerequisites for this and we will not only attract tourists from Romania, but also in Serbia and Macedonia.
In relation to revenue from tourism this year, Marinov said that it would be much better if the amount of 2.6 billion euros, which provide some for this year is confirmed, but according to him, unfortunately this will not happen.
Last year, revenues were 2.5 billion euros. During the first six months of this year the decline was 7.8%, both in terms of number of foreign tourists and to the passes.
I hope that we could reach an amount of revenue for the state budget of around 1.8 billion euros., Ivo Marinov said.
According to him, the main problem facing the Bulgarian tourism and hotel is a reduction in tourism demand, especially from foreign partners.
In his words, this is related to the slow issuance of visas for Russian citizens and the state of infrastructure in the country.
We discuss the mechanism for tourist zoning of Bulgaria. To carry out this project, it must first be legally defined, in order to know what are the rights and obligations of the regions, added Marinov.
Currently there is only one tourist area, which is registered and operates – Sofia. The proposals are to establish eight more tourist areas. The principle of zoning will be geographically and product.

It is envisaged that these areas should be the relationship between businesses, municipalities and state and to serve for the management of destinations, said Ivo Marinov.
Bulgaria as a member of the European Union should follow the common EU visa policy, which means that the border visas can be issued. Currently, with colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discuss the options and opportunities to improve visa services to the citizens of Russia who want to visit Bulgaria for tourism, but also opportunities for increased staffing and physical capacity of our consulates in Russia Marinov said in connection with discussions on visa facilitation with Russia.
Asked about the tragedy in Ohrid, Marinov said that the checks on companies involved with the excursion to Ohrid, where the Bulgarians died tragically continue. To have as much information, supervising prosecutor has committed the National Tourism Agency and the Commission on Consumer Protection in soon to visit the offices of these companies and to make appropriate checks due.
Ivo Marinov informed that currently develops software for creating electronic register of tour operators, then due to meet with representatives from the Ministry of Interior in order to align things and see if this National Register travel may be used by them for the purposes of border control.
He added that money for advertising of Bulgarian tourism should be more, but at the same time, no criteria and assessments of the effectiveness of money spent.
We will review the participation of Bulgaria in international tourism fairs and will decide whether the number of holdings to be reduced at the expense of quality of presentation, Ivo Marinov said.
Our idea for next year is to choose a company that performed the national tourist stands in London and Frankfurt, he said. The first phase will be design, and the second stage – the choice of firm implementation of the selected conceptual design and the so-prepared national stand to participate two years.

––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––

Finance