By the end of April over 7000 tourists are expected to arrive in Varna airport. Those coming out of the high season are mainly retired people who want to stay in quality accommodation and over 50% will have previously visited Bulgaria.
There will be a rise of over 18% in the number of British tourists for the summer and over 8000 Australians are arriving. Bulgaria has also finally managed to enter the French tourist market, for the first time ever Bulgaria will be included in offerings from the major French tour operators. An article in the prestigious French tourism magazine L’Echo names Bulgaria as the ‘’New Eldorado’’, as a place with an extremely diverse tourist product.
Sunny Beach resort starts the season with 10 new hotels, boosting the capacity there by 2,500 beds, and the first tourists to arrive are expected in May, most of these will come from the UK and Scandinavian countries. More than 30 British tour operators have Bulgaria in their 2005 portfolios and 14 Danish operators have included it in theirs.
EU experts reckon Bulgaria is able to accept 10 million tourists per year and Deputy Economy Minister Hadzhinikolov stated that tourism forms 12.5% of the domestic product, he underlined the fact that the Bulgarian tourist product is offered at a very attractive price and the country is promoted abroad as an all year round destination.
