"The whole process is wrong": A new attempt to successfully promote destination Bulgaria

The national advertising of Bulgaria is among the main priorities of the Ministry of Tourism in the new senior caretaker cabinet. This became clear from the words of the minister who retained his post, Ilin Dimitrov, who today presented to journalists the tasks set by the ministry.

"The pressing goals and tasks, whose solutions will be sought in the short term, are related to the deployment of the national advertising of destination Bulgaria through precise and targeted actions by markets, the dispatch of three new tourist attachés in important markets for Bulgaria, the transparent conduct of procedures for renting beaches through video surveillance and increasingly digitalized work to facilitate consumers and curb the gray sector," Dimitrov said during the press conference.

Another attempt

Advertising Bulgaria as a destination is a topic that has been one of the sector's hot potatoes for years. The few funds allocated and the old model by which the process is carried out are among the main problems associated with its failure. In addition to all this, the political situation in the country has been extremely unstable in the last two years, which further complicates the decision-making process.

Meeting the targets set for the promotion of Bulgaria are, to say the least, difficult to achieve in view of the fact that there is no budget tabled and voted for 2023. In other words, this means that the country currently has one-twelfth of last year's money. In 2022, the budget for the EU will be less than a third of the budget for the EU. The Ministry of Tourism had set aside BGN 18 million for advertising.

"I don't think we can expect anything significant to change in the sector until we have some political stability," Daniela Stoeva, a board member of the Association of Bulgarian Tour Operators and Travel Agents (ABTTA), told Economic.bg.

According to her, the whole process — from the public procurement to the platforms for the implementation of advertisements — is wrong. And if we continue to follow the old model, we will not succeed. "The main criterion in the Ministry of Tourism procurement is lowest price. And we are fighting for quality of content after all. My thought is that if we go back to the same model looking for best results, I don't think the outcome will be any different," she says.

Changes to Bulgaria's advertising campaign have been talked about since the first caretaker cabinet of Gulub Donev, when Minister Dimitrov made a proposal to increase the target budget to BGN 100 million in 2023. A proposal that was never implemented, and the industry then said that "millions are being thrown to the wind — without a clear goal."

The now-past 2022 summer season was promoted with a video from late 2020. In the summer of 2021, the promo was even awarded first place for the best video promoting a destination at the 41st edition of Madrid's FITUR international forum. For the upcoming Summer 2023, it is not yet clear if a new promotional video will be created. Economic.bg posed this question to the Ministry of Tourism more than a month ago, but at the time of publishing there is still no answer.

Priorities

During today's press conference, Ilin Dimitrov outlined the following priorities for the ministry:

• Organizing and holding a series of business-oriented workshops abroad;
• organising journalistic tours with carefully selected participants and monitoring their publications;
• opening tourist offices in Romania and the UK;
• conducting clear and transparent beach rental procedures with the participation of KPKONPI, MoI and SANS monitors.

Winter season

Despite the delay in the start of the winter season not only in Bulgaria but also in most European ski resorts — due to the warm weather and lack of snow — the tourism industry in the country says that at the moment there is almost a full recovery.

"This whole situation has shown how unsustainable our tourism product is, as it depends entirely on weather conditions. And surely we need to think in the direction of how to diversify it in such a way that the effect of the impact of weather conditions is reduced," ABTTA said.

In addition, according to Daniela Ivanova, owner of a family hotel in Bansko, every year there are empty days after New Year and the full season starts in mid-January. "Everything goes according to plan, the hotel is full, and the situation last year was similar, although there was snow earlier on," she said.