In the summer of 2018 Bulgaria’s Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova said that the Single System for Tourist Information will be launched before the start of the next summer tourist season. This brave forecast has been materialized indeed, because on February 20 the entry of the necessary database about all places for accommodation on Bulgarian territory has begun. The purpose of the Single System for Tourist Information is to boost revenues in tourism and help people get a clear picture of the employment and the accountancy at the Bulgarian hotels. Thus, all doubts about possible falsifications of the number of places for tourist accommodation in order to save on tourism taxes will be gone, although tourism is the only sector of the Bulgarian economy which pays 9% value added tax ( VAT in other sectors amounts to 20%). This is now possible, because the registers of the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior, the National Revenue Agency, the Ministry of Tourism, the National Statistical Institute and the Bulgarian municipalities have been integrated into the Single System for Tourist Information.

The project has been already activated in Sofia municipality and four other Bulgarian municipalities – Burgas, Vratsa, Sozopol and Velingrad. Currently, information about 18,800 sites which are part of the National Tourism Register, have been entered in the new system. The owners must register their tourist sites until October 1, 2019. If the information about some tourist site contains a mistake, the owners will have the opportunity to make the necessary corrections and amendments.

After the deadline (October 1) the Ministry of Tourism will impose sanctions on the owners of tourist sites who fail to register their sites before the deadline. Penalty fees will vary between EUR 500 and 1,500 at first inspection. They will double at a second inspection and the authorities may take the license of a given tourist site if their owners fail to make the necessary registration before the third inspection. The Single System for Tourist Information will not be public and only the abovementioned institutions and owners of tourist sites will have access to it. Does the new system guarantee security of information and how registration of tourist sites located in areas with poor Internet connection will be made? The Commercial Director of the company fulfilling the project Yordan Draganchev told Radio Bulgaria details:

We have reached an agreement with the State e-Government Agency to install its infrastructure into the Single System for Tourist Information, which is a big success. It guarantees that most hacker attacks will be blocked and the new system will be protected through the instruments of the state administration. All data was encrypted and we have already made cyber security tests. No one can guarantee full security, but I believe that we have undertaken all possible measures to prevent such attacks. The areas with poor Internet connection will have to send information once a week, unlike the other tourist sites which have to provide information on a daily basis. However, we must say clearly that the Bulgarian Ministry of Tourism has taken the necessary measures to avoid a scenario when all hotels will have poor Internet connection in a certain moment. The Tourism Ministry reached an agreement with the Communications Regulation Commission which has to check for possible problems with Internet connection in every town or village. The registration will be made directly into the system or through the components of the E-government.

The registration is completely free of charge for the Bulgarian business and will save a lot of time and bureaucratic procedures. Tourists will have to provide two types of information depending on whether they are EU citizens or citizens of third countries. Non-EU citizens will have to provide more detailed information for security reasons. They will be required to write their names, personal ID number, date of arrival and date of departure. The citizens of the EU member states will have to write their names and date of arrival and departure. Hotel-keepers and people from the competent institutions who are expected to work with the new Single System for Tourist Information will go under special trainings.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov