BOURGAS Municipality announced on May 26 that it was to ban smoking on beaches and in the entire seafront area of the coastal city.
No smoking signs will be put up along the promenade next to the coast warning tourists of the ban. The municipality’s decision was supported by the Bulgarian Red Cross (BRC) and the Regional Inspectorate for Protection and Control of Public Health in Bourgas.
BRC activists are touring pubs in the coastal city and offering smokers, in exchange for their packets of cigarettes, a sticker explaining how harmful smoking is.
However, no sanctions are provided for tourists who ignore the no-smoking signs.
Smoking is not the only, and definitely not the most serious, problem facing the summer season at Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.
In spite of many warnings and measures taken (including deployment of the gendarmerie), seaside resorts have so far failed to halt construction work on hotels, which appears to be continuing at full scale. The core of the issue is that foreign visitors are discouraged by the noise and inconvenience caused by construction projects.
Bulgarian National Television (BNT) broadcast a report on May 31, showing a cheerless picture from the resort of Zlatni Pyasutsi (Golden Sands), where construction work was continuing.
Varna mayor Kiril Yordanov, who has already issued about a dozen orders banning construction work or fixing deadlines for work to stop, said that he was helpless to stop the developers. Developers have started advertising the hotels abroad, although work is not yet finished, and are adamant about completing construction so that they may receive the first tourists.
Yordanov said he had asked the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works and the National Construction Supervision Directorate to cancel the developers’ building contracts, as no other steps seemed to have worked.
In another development, three Bulgarian hotels have joined the Best Western world chain. They are the four-star Expo and Evropa in Sofia, and the Royal Hotel in Plovdiv. The announcement was made at a news conference on May 26 by Carol Marriott, Best Western CEO for Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Armenia, Syria and Lebanon. The first Bulgarian hotel to sign a contract with Best Western was the City Hotel in Sofia, four years ago.
The Best Western chain is also opening a representative office in Sofia.
Marriott said that it was planning to expand in Bulgaria. Talks have been held with owners of and investors in hotels in Bourgas, Varna, Pamporovo and Velingrad. Negotiations about the signing of a membership contract with hotels in the village of Sveti Vlas on the Black Sea and Pamporovo were close to finalisation.
A total of 4100 hotels in 80 countries worldwide are members of the Best Western chain. The member hotels take part in determining the policy of the chain and participate jointly in tourist exchanges and expos with joint advertising and marketing. All hotels use the booking system developed by Best Western.
To become members of the association and to use the Best Western logo, hotels should meet 72 standards and their location should meet the interests of the international patrons of the chain, Marriott said.