Minister Angelkova and Ambassador Makarov discussed Bulgarian-Russian cooperation in tourism

The Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to Bulgaria Anatolii Makarov discussed bilateral cooperation in the sector. The Russian market is one of the major generating markets for the Bulgarian tourism industry and we are working pro-actively to attract steadily an increasing number of tourists from the Federation, Nikolina Angelkova said. She reminded that Russian citizens ranked 4^th by the number of foreign tourists having visited our country in 2016 with over 580 000 visits.

Minister Angelkova added that the expectations for this year were for these indicators to improve, especially in summer, and this is confirmed by the first statistics for the year.  For the period January-March 2017 about 28 700 Russian tourists visited Bulgaria, i.e. up some 12% on the same period in 2016, specified Angelkova.

Nikolina Angelkova assured Ambassador Makarov that the Bulgarian government was making serious efforts to develop infrastructure in the resort areas and national tourist complexes.

Ambassador Makarov underscored that bilateral relations in tourism would continue developing pro-actively. His Excellency invited Minister Angelkova to take part in the programme of the Week of the Russian Spiritual Culture and the Day of Russia in Bulgaria on 9 June, and some of the events were to take place in the area of Varna.