The number of tourists who have taken a holiday on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast in July has shrunk by 2 million compared to the same period of last year. The number of charter flights to the country’s main airports has been slashed by a devastating 80% compared to the summer of 2019.

Yet the number of trips by Bulgarians for the May-September period is expected to reach 7 million 300,000, says Assoc. Prof. Rumen Draganov, director of the Institute of Analysis and Assessments in Tourism. But will internal tourism be able to compensate for the gaping hole bored into the tourist sector by the Covid-19 pandemic? The situation is unpredictable, people from the industry agree.

“There are no available parking spaces or accommodation in Sozopol The situation is much the same along the entire southern portion of the Black Sea coastline, and elsewhere,” Assoc. Prof. Drganov says. “Everything is full up! And tourists are having a satisfying holiday. They say – Nessebar is a splendid town when it is not packed with tourists all bumping into one another! And that is true of all other resorts as well. So, it turns out that the guest houses and the small “human-sized” hotels are now bursting at the seams. And everything connected with overdevelopment, all the mammoth-sized all-inclusive complexes are standing empty!”

Uncontrolled overdevelopment that has made a concrete jungle out of seaside resorts has transformed Bulgaria’s Black Sea coastline beyond recognition, so that it attracts mostly low-budget holidaymakers from all over Europe. The sea-beaches-cheap alcohol formula has been a cliché for Bulgarian tourism for years. But is that really what Bulgarian tourism should be like? With the idea of boosting the sector in the times of global pandemic, the government brought down VAT  for hotels and restaurants from 20% to 9%. But for all that the sector continues to complain and to say it is on the brink of bankruptcy:

“So, let us ask ourselves – which sector? Because the guest houses all over the country are working at full throttle,” Rumen Draganov says. “They are full up, there is no danger of bankruptcy there. Who is complaining – the “mammoths” who never really stopped to think where they were going to find staff or tourists for their complexes. What they were relying on was society, the popularity of Bulgaria as a tourist destination. But the only thing they have done is to undermine the parameters of the sector. Yes, it is true that this summer we have far fewer low-budget tourists coming from abroad! But on the other hand we have those who choose guest houses and small family hotels, and they are high-end tourists, unlike the low-budget holidaymakers.”

In the conditions of pandemic people are choosing more remote and out-of-the-way places to go. Could the crisis actually help Bulgaria finally crawl out of its shabby image of a cheap seaside holiday destination?

“The crisis is having a very good remedial effect on tourism,” Rumen Draganov says. “It is showing who is who in the industry and who the loyal employers are. In June and July – the most difficult months for the sector - these people opened their hotels. Some haven’t stopped working since the start of the epidemic at all! And they have kept their staff, some have even hired more people. The entire concept of low-budget tourism has crashed! We have all seen how, at a time of crisis like this, it isn’t working at all!”

Photos: Veneta Nikolova