Bulgaria will launch a massive campaign next month to promote its resorts and tourist sites via major international TV channels in a bid to compensate for a drop in the number of Russian and Ukrainian tourists, Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova has said.

The programme worth BGN 6 M (EUR 3 M) will be funded through the Operational Programme Regional Development  of the European Union, Angelkova announced during a visit to the city of Veliko Tarnovo, in northern Bulgaria, on Monday.

The promotion video footage showing Bulgarian tourism destinations and landmarks will be aired in nine languages on Euronews, Eurosport, Discovery and National Geographic TV channels until the end of 2015. It will promote opportunities for various types of tourism travel.

A contract for airing the promotion video with BBC TV is yet to be signed, Angelkova said.

She also said the Tourism Ministry aimed to maintain the rate of increase in the number of tourists staying in Bulgaria in the current year.

Some 7.5 million tourists stayed in Bulgaria last year, 5% up on 2013, according to official data.

Bulgaria will advertise its tourist sites and resorts at over 40 events at home and abroad with the business-to-business tourism exchanges in Moscow, Kiev, Berlin and London the first in the row.

Angelkova said last week a register of tourist destinations in Bulgaria was being prepared in a bid to give a boost to tourism that generated 12 to 15 percent of the country’s GDP.