Bulgaria Should Be Year-Round Tourist Destination - Minister

Bulgaria should become a year-round tourist destination, according to Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova.

In a Sunday interview for bTV, she made clear that the situation in the sector was not good, adding that the Tourism Ministry was revising all projects in which it was a participant, most notably EU operational programs.

“Without good infrastructure we cannot have good tourism. It also turned out that we lack a vision for the local tourist product and for national advertisement and we have no register of tourist sites and their ownership and location is unclear,” she emphasized, citing the unavailability of a national tourist logo and brand as a case in point.

Angelkova stated that Bulgaria was in talks with Brussels to salvage EU funds.

“We are trying to develop an emergency action plan to minimize losses. By end-2015, Bulgaria is supposed to absorb around 20 million levs, but we risk losing some 8 million levs due to certain problems,” the Tourism Minister noted.