Over 700 000 Germans Visited Bulgaria for Tourism Purposes in 2014 - Minister

Speaking at the ITB Berlin (Internationale Tourismus-Börse Berlin), Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova noted that nearly 1 million Germans had visited Bulgaria in 2014, with over 700 000 of them traveling to the country for tourism.

The Bulgarian delegation taking part in the world's largest tourism trade fair also includes Deputy Tourism Minister Nadya Marinova and Bulgaria's Ambassador to Germany Radi Naydenov, according to the government's press office, as cited by money.bg.

Angelkova boasted at a press conference that Bulgaria was second in Europe by biodiversity and among the top 3 European countries by number of artifacts discovered during archaeological excavations.

She claimed that Bulgaria had great potential for cultural tourism, eco tourism, spa tourism, and sea and mountain tourism.

Angelkova presented a large-scale promotional campaign that had been implemented on the German market, including ads placed on 39 tourist websites and in 11 print editions (including Reise & Preise; Freizeit Spass, etc.), 406 airings of commercials on 9 TV channels (including RTL 2, SKY, TELE 5, Sport 1, etc.), and 36 subway ads placed in the Berlin underground.

She made clear that the campaign had been implemented under the EU operational program Regional Development 2007-2013.

Angelkova noted that in January 2015 arrivals of German nationals in Bulgaria had registered an increase by nearly 45% from the same period of 2014, meaning that Germans were beginning to discover tourism opportunities other than sea resorts in Bulgaria.

During the ITB, Angelkova met with representatives of Thomas Cook to discuss opportunities for enhancing cooperation and increasing tourist numbers in Bulgaria through the well-developed network of the...