The popularity of Bulgaria as a destination is constantly increasing and every year it is visited by more and more foreign tourists. This was announced by Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova at a meeting with representatives of the Young Professionals Club and the Bulgarian community in Washington. She added that indicative of the sector are the encouraging data from the statistics for 2017, according to which foreign tourist visits exceeded 8,882 million and increased by 7,6% compared to a year earlier.

An even higher growth of 9.3 per cent is recorded in the revenues from international tourism. In 2017 total revenues from the sector amounted to BGN 6.895 billion, according to BNB data. In the last 2 years the average annual growth of tourist visits in the country is 12%, while data for the same period for the European Union is about 7%, Angelkova said.

She said that two projects are currently underway, with which we expect to attract more visitors to the country and to increase visits in the active summer and winter season. The Ministry of Tourism develops spa destinations, with the concept project covering 7 directions around the whole country. In order to involve a wide range of stakeholders in the development of the destinations, opinions from 50 municipalities, which are the basis for the creation of destinations, have been requested.

The Bulgarian Ministry of Tourism in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry creates 12 wine-culinary destinations, the minister also informed. She explained that they include both traditional wine and typical cuisine for the region, as well as about 50 municipalities and about 100 tourist sites.