The chairperson of the Association of Bulgarian tour operators and travel agents, Bayko Baykov, said on Monday that Bulgarian tourism is experiencing its hardest year in the past decade.

According to Kalin Draganov, a member of the association, cultural tourism in the country was mainly developed by the municipalities.

In his words, municipalities have invested considerable resources in the reconstruction of existing sites and the building of new ones.

There are no exact figures, but the association has recorded an increase in the number of Bulgarian tourists visiting cultural sites, some places registering a ten-fold increase.

However it was important to also increase the flow of foreign tourists to the country, daily Dnevnik informs.

Draganov called on the Tourism Ministry to invest more efforts in presenting Bulgaria as interesting destination for cultural tourism, which could be achieved only through advertisement.

As regards the different kinds of tourism, Bulgaria was most popular for its Black Sea coast.

The decline in the number of tourists in the first eight months of the year amounted to 9 % and was mainly due to the drop in the number of visitors from Russia and Ukraine.

Tour operators have not recorded any significant decrease on the European markets.

Draganov stated that efforts should be directed towards European markets, especially to the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, which held large reserves.

He informed that there were good forecasts for the forthcoming winter season, the main number of visitors coming from the UK, Russia and Turkey.

 An evidence for this was the fact that there were no longer available rooms in the ski resort of Pamporovo.

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