The groups of fellow students that a younger Mario al-Djebouri brought to his Bulgarian homeland from London swiftly became enthusiasts about the wonders of the country.
They were enthralled by Bulgaria’s warm and hospitable people and by the great snow in the winter resorts. “What we didn’t have then but do have now,” he says, are Bulgaria’s world-class facilities that can stand on equal footing with well-known skiing holiday destinations elsewhere in Europe. So too, they were impressed by the affordability of the country as a destination.
“In Bulgaria, all of your senses are set tingling; all of your senses are catered to,” he smiles.
That is why he believes that a good slogan for the country is: “Come to your senses”. He means that in both, well, senses of the term. That Bulgaria is a treat for the senses, and that the reality of the country may be appreciated, as a new place with which to fall in love, a new partner in the European Union family, the continent’s new front garden to enjoy. “Experience all of your senses to the utmost,” he says.
Winter holiday resorts in Bulgaria are developing rapidly in keeping with demand, and demand is high, as evidenced by the figures of the increasing number of visitors. In January to March 2006, the number of visitors from Ireland grew 142 per cent year-on-year, from Russia 34 per cent, the UK (off a high base) 12 per cent, Austria 31 per cent, France 15 per cent and Denmark 24 per cent - and this is only a brief sample of the statistics.
The head of the State Agency for Tourism sits down to describe global trends in the winter tourism market, and what Bulgaria is doing, and will and should do, to keep pace.
“You have what I would term a revitalisation of the winter skiing, holiday and sports holidays. You have more people looking not only for summer but also winter breaks. That in itself is good news, not only for Bulgaria but also for everyone else, because it means that the market is growing. What needs to be very carefully analysed is that their needs and requirements are changing from those of even 10 years ago. Whereas in the past people used to favour package tours, more and more people are turning to the internet to book their holidays. That is a very important aspect of global trends because that means you need to be very focused on the way that you market yourself, that you reach a maximum number of people, and also the quality of the tourists that you will be attracting is also very varied, from those who would go for a package tour, while you have individuals, especially from the British isles, who go for long weekends - for winter breaks. To be able to provide and cater to those people, you need to have low-cost airlines.”
He continues: “People are starting to buy properties in winter resorts. In Bulgaria, purely because of the boom in real estate, we have seen that phenomenon, but if Bulgaria had the same scale of low-cost airlines that the rest of Europe does, how much more that effect would have been seen.
“I don’t think that people would mind travelling three hours instead of an hour-and-a-half, as long as they knew that they were coming to a nice place where their property costs, let’s say, a fifth of what it costs in Switzerland, France or Austria.”
Time, he says, would not be a decisive factor. The decisive factor would be the availability of low-cost flights.
“We are also seeing, more and more, people trying to combine their skiing holiday with other activities, be it a spa resort, all the other types of sports starting to develop - snow polo, snow golf. They are more promotional events, but nonetheless very popular.”
This needs to be combined with extreme and adventure tourism - ballooning, delta-planing on skis off cliffs - as well as the growing snowboard phenomenon, popular among the younger generation, who like a lot of activity. This younger generation prefers, rather than rounding off the day resting in front a log fire, to continue the day displaying their energy on the dancefloor or taking a break from the slopes at open-air bars. “They want action, they want nightlife, music on the slopes.”
How does Bulgaria rate in meeting these trends?
“If you look at Bansko, for example, on pretty much all of these aspects we have done well and we rate pretty highly,” says al-Djebouri.
“We don’t yet have the low-cost airlines. Not enough emphasis among hotel owners to work on their internet presence and marketing on the internet, but that is a question of time. They will get used to the fact that you can generate a lot of revenue from the internet if you have the right site, if you are quoted in the right search engines.”
“What we are doing now for Bansko, in terms of the Agency’s role, is to set up a private-public partnership with Bansko to establish a tourist information office which will also have a reservations system, so that people will be able to see what’s available, even if they arrive for a weekend without a booking.”
He says that Bulgaria is doing well in what if offers in nightlife, especially in Bansko, while the other major resorts are catching up.
“The hotel base in Bulgaria is the newest in Europe. There are a lot of new, nice hotels. There are a lot of hotels starting to think about putting together spa centres, wellness centres.” To grow beyond being attractive purely on the basis of the winter season, the resorts are considering developing, for example, golf courses and horse-riding.
“We are doing well.”
Pamporovo is opening three new ski runs of a total length of five km.
New resorts are coming to fruition, such as Perelik in Pamporovo and Panachiste in the Rila mountains. “There is the appetite from investors. It is fuelled, to a certain extent, by the profits that they generate from real estate, which is an alluring market for foreign investors who are buying up property in the ski resorts.
“I foresee a very favourable and a very bright future for winter tourism in Bulgaria. We are blessed with a wonderful natural environment, very good winter conditions, with a lot of snow and a lot of sunny days during the winter, a reasonably long season. Although our mountain peaks are not as high as those in the Alps, nevertheless we have ample snow. Another positive is that we have beautiful forests, for trekking and hiking in an environment that is very pleasant, as opposed to the higher altitudes in the Alps where it is very cold and there is only barren rock. All of these things are absolute positives.”
As to the remaining challenges, al-Djebouri says that Bulgaria’s biggest challenge is connected with issues that are easily rectifiable. First is achieving the correct type of marketing and the right type of promotion to attract the right type of tourists.
“We don’t spend enough by far in terms of advertising and promotional campaigns in the markets that are key to Bulgarian winter tourism.”
Apart from marketing, another challenge is infrastructure - the roads to the resorts, accessibility, the infrastructure within the resorts, with pressure on water, electricity and sewerage systems.
“A critical point is to have well-planned growth of these resorts so that infrastructure is not always a secondary priority, but goes hand-in-hand with giving out the permits to build hotels, giving out permits for restaurants, so that you do not finish up in a situation where the capacity of the resort does not meet the requirements of the construction.”
He says that, as regards developments such Super Borovets, the ambitious large-scale plan to further modernise and expand the popular Rila mountain resort, “there is a great emphasis on infrastructure. The people behind these projects are very much aware of the importance that infrastructure plays in delivering a high-quality resort. We are not talking only about the infrastructure associated only with the skiing, such as the lifts, we are talking about the real infrastructure - the vital sewerage, electricity and water supply”.
He says that where there is a nicely developed project such as Perelik in Pamporovo, where private developers may try to come up with their own projects to tag on to its success, people were likely to prefer the project that had the best infrastructure, and the market may isolate ancillary private developments if the infrastructure there was inadequate.
Asked about the profile of current visitors and the profiles of those the country seeks to attract to join the ranks of visitors, he says that tourists from neighbouring countries and from Russia tended to be well supplied in disposable income, while those from Western countries such as the UK chose Bulgaria because of its affordability.
“But as with all tourism products that we offer, if these products are coupled with, first of all, the spa and wellness, the culture, the uniqueness of coming to ski in Bulgaria, the hospitality, the different cuisines - if you build around all of these things, this will be greatly to the liking of visitors.”
Low-cost airlines would also attract “high net worth” individuals who are pressed for time but not for money, and who find it more convenient to take a series of weekend trips rather than being away from the office during the working week.
“Then you have the profile of people who buy real estate and have chalets or holiday apartments in the winter resorts. These people would typically, in most cases, rent these properties out because they bought them as investments, so they have to be provided with a lot of assistance, not only from the infrastructure side, but also to allow new property management companies to operate so that those who chose to invest will see returns on their investments.” Doing so would attract even further investment, he says.
“We are looking at the more sophisticated travellers, the individual travellers outside the main tour operator package groups that we get, we are looking to cater for these people with more sophisticated needs and requirements.”
Al-Djebouri says that the main change in the next few years will be the new resorts coming onstream, and the importance of winter tourism increasing and growing with the growth and development of these resorts.
“Whereas 70 per cent of Bulgaria’s revenue from tourism comes from summer tourism, this will balance out more and more every year with winter tourism in terms of its importance and its ability to generate revenue for the country.
“You are going to see a lot of tying up of lots of different tourism types during the winter - spa and wellness, adventure and extreme tourism, cultural tourism, to offer attractive and diversified packages to different types of tourists.”
“You are going to see the Government, post-EU accession, investing structural and cohesion funds in infrastructure. This will help investors in these resorts really be on a par with resorts elsewhere in the world.”
In sum, he says, right now being in Bulgaria’s winter resorts means that “you end up just having a great time. You experience a lot more than you would in an Austrian, German or Swiss or French resort. Bulgaria, summer and winter, can be summed up with just the words: ‘come to your senses’.”
