Bulgaria Reports More than BGN 620 mn Growth in Tourism Revenues in 1st Eight Months of the Year

Sofia. There is more than BGN 620 million growth reported in the tourism revenues in the first eight months of the year. These are real results achieved since the establishment of the Ministry of Tourism and thanks to the efforts made by everyone in the sector.

This is what Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova said speaking before students with the South-West University of Neofit Rilski in the town of Blagoevgrad on Tuesday.

Minister Angelkova delivered a public lecture to present the priorities in the tourism sector and the opportunities for realisation of the young people in it.

Ms Angelkova stressed that there was a highly positive tendency and the growth in the revenues was outstripping the growth in the number of foreign tourists, which meant that there were real results achieved in the work on attracting more solvent clients and guests.

The minister of tourism also put an accent on the fact that the huge growth in the sector required more qualified staff. In her words, tourism is one of the sectors needing more staff but still there is stability and the growth rates are preserved.

According to the available data, Bulgaria has welcomed about 7 million foreign tourists in the first nine months of the year, as compared with 7.1 million for the entire 2015.

Asked about what the positive results were due to, Nikolina Angelkova said that the big tour operators were interested in several key factors to choose and show preference to certain tourism destination. These factors include the political stability and security in the country, good infrastructure, material base, qualified staff.

The perspectives for the district of Blagoevgrad in terms of attracting more tourists were tabled for discussion, too. Statistical results show that the region is now positioning itself better on the tourist map. More than 371,000 tourists have registered overnight stays at hotels or other accommodation establishments with 10 or more beds in January-August 2016, which is more than 10% growth compared with the previous year. The real overnight stays realised amount at a total of 966,000, while the revenues – at more than BGN 44 million, which is some 14% growth.