As the holiday season approaches, the Christmas and New Year’s offers are selling like hot cakes. Bookings started as early as September, and it is now next to impossible to find any vacancies in Bulgaria’s popular tourist destinations, hotel and restaurant operators say. The reason – Bulgarians seem to have learnt to plan ahead. This year the holiday packages, depending on the category of the hotel and the services on offer, range from 80 to approximately 500 Leva (EUR 40 – EUR 255) a night. But there are holiday offers reaching the unbelievable 15,000 Leva – and for New Year’s Eve in Bulgaria at that – and they too are sold out.

“During the holiday season – from 20 December to 2 January – we expect some 720,000 trips in Bulgaria and abroad,” says tourism expert Konstantin Zankov in an interview with Radio Bulgaria and outlines an interesting tendency:

“This year we are seeing a heightened interest in Christmastime, something we are delighted to see. Because Bulgarians didn’t used to travel much at Christmas, preferring to plan it as a family affair. But now, maybe because of the combination of non-working days this yhear, interest in the Christmas packages has been very high, and they sold out very quickly for the better hotels. For the New Year we also have very active early bookings.”

The tourist offers for the spa resorts are now sold out, with the highest percentage of early bookings. But it is guest houses that are the hit this year once again, says Konstantin Zankov:  

“As has been the tradition, guest houses are the first to fill up, then come the winter resorts – the big resorts like Bansko and Borovets, but also smaller resorts like Malyovitsa, interest in which has been very significant this winter. Tourists are taking time during the holidays to practice their favourite winter sports, while those who are not into skiing simply enjoy winter’s serene beauty. Bookings are high in the Bulgarian towns, but also at small hotels on the Black Sea coast with attractive festive programmes, plus spa,” Konstantin Zankov says.

• Lakeside guesthouses, spa resorts and ethnographic villages are a hit for the Christmas holidays
• Meeting Father Christmas in Lapland or staying at a village guest house – where do Bulgarians plan to travel for the holidays?
  

And one more tendency – more and more often we choose to spend holiday season far from home. More than 100,000 Bulgarians are planning to spend Christmas and the New Year abroad, with most of them travelling to neighbouring countries like Serbia, Greece and Turkey, followed by the European capitals to which there are low-cost flights, and of course charter holidays to warmer climes for which planning and bookings start as early as summer.  

• More than 100 000 Bulgarians will travel abroad during the holidays

“The low-cost exotic destinations – that’s Egypt, Dubai, as well as Tunisia, though the weather is quite cool there right now,” says Konstantin Zankov. “But Dubai is a traditional Christmas and New Year’s destination. For example, for Dubai there are packages starting at around 1,000 Leva (a little over EUR 500), and reaching 2,000-4,000 Leva per person. But if we want truly exotic destinations, then we should take a look at the holiday travel to destinations far away, like the Seychelles, the Maldives, Mauritius, the Dominican Republic, or even the round trips to Vietnam, Cambodia etc. And of course – the cruises! This is a tendency that has been growing very much in recent years.”

The December holidays are expected to give the start to a successful winter season, with an expected increase of 5%, the Ministry of Tourism says.

•  Five percent growth in the number of tourists expected during the winter season

With the early snow in November, Bulgaria’s ski resorts were able to open the season earlier than usual – at the beginning of December.

Translated and posted by Milena Daynova
Photos: Pexels, Festa Winter Palace, Pixabay