A unified tourism register will be created in Bulgaria by 2006. Currently, a tourism register features 450 hotels along the Black Sea Coast. Nearly 100 more have applied for inclusion. Since April, officials from the Bulgarian Tourism agency have examined more than 150 hotels. Often, hotels cannot produce official documents, or lack proper security and emergency exits. Travel agency managers often cannot show licenses for the qualifications and language skills of their staff.
Inspections and the register are needed since a large number of companies lack licenses. Tourism provides net revenues of nearly 1.6 billion euro. The amount collected in taxes, however, is under 80 million leva. It should be nearly 100 million leva higher. The lack of a national tourism strategy leads to chaos, tourism experts said. After the new Cabinet comes to power, tourism organisations will present a memorandum for the creation of a strategy for tourism service development. (Dnevnik)