Bulgaria’s Tourism Ministry: Winter ski season surpassed pre-pandemic levels by close to 9%
Bulgaria’s 2022/2023 winter season has been a success, according to unified tourism information system data – although the ski season is not yet officially over, tourist registrations have surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 8.7 per cent, the country’s Tourism Ministry said.
The ministry said that this season saw winter tourist numbers up by 24 per cent compared with the 2021/2022, the strongest performance in the past four winter seasons.
“Let’s let the numbers do the talking – nearly nine per cent year-to-date growth compared with pre-Covid times,” caretaker Tourism Minister Ilin Dimitrov said.
“The forecast is that in the summer we will also have eight per cent growth compared with 2019, that is, we expect this to be our strongest summer yet,” Dimitrov said.
“One of my main tasks was to restore normality. Well, we are no longer talking about recovery, but about growth,” he said.
The unified tourism information system data on the number of registrations of tourists in accommodation indicates more than 1.7 million for the 2022/2023 winter season. This covers the period from the beginning of December to the end of March, the Tourism Ministry said.
Most registrations were Bulgarian tourists, more than 1.2 million, followed by tourists from Romania, more than 65 000, Greece, more than 58 000, the UK, more than 50 000, Israel, more than 46 000, Türkiye, more than 41 000 and North Macedonia, more than 25 000.
The ministry said that the results in terms of foreign tourist revenue for December 2022 and January 2023 are almost identical to those of the pre-pandemic December 2019 and January 2020.
(Photo: Lance Nelson of Bansko App)
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