ANALYSIS OF THE TOURISTS’ FLOWS TO BULGARIA FROM THE NEIGHBORING EMITTING MARKETS

The tourism industry is an important economic sector in the world economy. This is one of the most fast-growing industries in Bulgaria and the biggest contribution brings the inbound tourism from the neighboring countries. The main goal of the paper is to define the importance of the tourist flows from Romania, Turkey, Greece, Republic of Macedonia and Serbia to Bulgaria, analyzing the fluctuations in the period of 2010 – 2016. Some recommendations for development of the tourism in the country and new tourism products are highlighted as a result of the analysis. They could attract tourists from the neighboring countries for short or long stay. For this purpose, the paper discusses the basic indicators of the travel industry as international arrivals from visitors of abroad, nights spent by foreigners in accommodation establishments, etc

El impacto de la pandemia de COVID-19 en el turismo de la Península Balcánica

El turismo es uno de los sectores económicos más afectados por la pandemia del COVID-19 a nivel global. Para evaluar las consecuencias provocadas por el confinamiento y las restricciones de los viajes a zonas turísticas, es necesario realizar análisis regionales. La península Balcánica es una de las tres grandes penínsulas del sur de Europa. Los recursos turísticos naturales y antropogénicos de la Península siempre han sido un requisito para el desarrollo de la zona como un destino turístico atractivo. El acceso al Mar Negro en el este, al Mar Egeo en el sur y a los mares Adriático y Jónico en el oeste definen el interés de los turistas al turismo de sol y playa. En las montañas de la península Balcánica como: Rila, Pirin, Ródope y los Montes Balcanes, que dieron el nombre de la península, se hallan algunas de las famosas estaciones internacionales de esquí. En estas zonas se han desarrollado varias rutas de senderismo y existen las condiciones propicias para el ecoturismo. Por eso, el objetivo principal del artículo es analizar el impacto de la pandemia en el turismo de los países que se encuentran totalmente en esta región de Europa. Se analizan los datos oficiales sobre los principales indicadores turísticos de los países que se encuentran íntegramente en el territorio de la Península Balcánica (Albania, Bosnia y Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Grecia, Kosovo, Macedonia del Norte, Montenegro)

THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL BLACK SEA RESORTS IN THE CONTEXT OF DOMESTIC TOURISM

Stimulating domestic tourism is a priority in the development of the tourism industry in Bulgaria. The share of the population's expenditure on travel within the country averages 69% of total travel expenditure. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyse the attractiveness, effectiveness, and significance of the national Black Sea resorts for domestic tourism. The data used in the present paper are published and accessible at the web site of the National Statistical Institute of Republic of Bulgaria. To examine the main tendencies in the yearly time series, concerning the Bulgarian Black Sea resorts, we have used statistical analysis of the trend cycle. The selected indicators used for analyses are bed-places in the accommodation establishments in the Bulgarian national Black Sea resorts, arrivals in accommodation establishments, nights spent, revenue from the nights spent and average daily rate per person. The results of the present analysis confirm some trends regarding tourists' attitudes towards domestic tourism and that the resorts offer a pricing policy to attract Bulgarian tourists. The analysis shows the potential of domestic tourism to recover the tourism industry in crises

130 Years from the birth of Krum Dronchilov

The present paper is dedicated to the life and scientific work of assoc. prof. PhD Krum Dronchilov because of the 130th anniversary of his birth in 2019. The article focuses on his background and family, his education and professional career. An overview of his renowned and significant scientific publications is made. Descriptive and analytical methods have been used. Materials of the Faculty of Geology and Geography of the Sofia University, conserved at the State Archives, scientific publications of famous Bulgarian geographers of the last century and of contemporary authors are used as sources of information. As a result, a new, more thorough and comprehensive look at the importance of the research and the contribution of assoc. prof. PhD Krum Dronchilov to the development of geography in the early twentieth century in Bulgaria was made

Sanitation and hygiene as factors for choosing a place to stay: perceptions of the Bulgarian tourists

In December 2019, a relatively unknown disease was detected in the city of Wuhan, the capital of the Chinese Hubei province. Identified as a new respiratory virus and largely defined as a novel type of coronavirus (Huang et al., 2020), what is known as SARS-CoV-2 but commonly referred as COVID-19, has spread worldwide with unprecedented speed and infection rate. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency on 30 January 2020 which further escalated to a worldwide global pandemic declared on 11 March 2020. At the time of writing in mid-May 2020, around 4.5 million infections had been reported with nearly 300,000 cases with a fatal outcome (John Hopkins University, 2020). Although the world has previously been exposed to notable epidemics/pandemics such as Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Zika (Buheji & Ahmed, 2020), none of them has had such a notorious and holistic impact on the world’s economy and society. The OECD and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have already warned that the overall economic impact is expected to be substantially higher than the global financial crisis in 2008 (Hunt, 2020). The tourism industry has been one of the hardest hits by the disruption from the COVID-19 with the imposed restrictions on both international and domestic travel, and the immediate closure of hotels, restaurants and visitor attractions. According to UNWTO (2020), the industry is expected to decline by 20–30% with an anticipated loss of around 300 USD-450 billion. As WHO currently “does not recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the current information available” (WHO, 2020), the tourism as we know it has disappeared and “overtourism” (Milano et al., 2019) has become “non-tourism at all”. As Niewiadomski (2020) points out, the world is now experiencing a “de-globalization” with around 90% of the world’s population subject to a certain level of travel restrictions, imposed home-stay lockdowns or arrival quarantines (Hall et al., 2020; Gössling et al., 2020). As Novelli et al. (2018) argue, there is a limited academic scholarship on health-related crisis and their impact on the tourism industry, particularly in the developing world. Despite the notable and timely appearance of many studies focused on COVID-19 and tourism, the majority of them are conceptual in nature and more focused on the “transformation” of tourism from a range of social science perspectives (see for example, Ateljevic, 2020; Brouder, 2020; Cheer, 2020; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020; Nepal, 2020; Prideaux et al., 2020). Our paper focuses on another crucial dimension of the post-COVID-19 era – the importance of safety, sanitation and hygiene in the context of tourism and hospitality, and more specifically, sanitation measures as a decision-making factor for choosing an accommodation provider and willingness of the tourists to use their own sanitation products to ensure good personal hygiene

Cultural ecosystem services for development of nature-based tourism in Bulgaria

The rich and diverse Natural Heritage of Bulgaria is a prerequisite for the development of nature- based tourism (NBT) of a new type. The research is carried out by the implementation of the ecosystem approach. The results include an assessment of the natural heritage capacity to provide goods and services for the development of NBT in the Tourist Regions (TR) of Bulgaria. The results show the spatial distribution of the natural heritage sites in all nine TR in Bulgaria and their natural capacity for development of different types of NBT. There are only 37 municipalities out of 265 with not a one Natural Heritage (NH) site, and all the rest have natural resources to develop NBT. The results can be of use for the achievement of the goals for sustainable tourism by assessment of the capacity to provide recreation ecosystem services (RES)