Minister Angelkova held a work meeting with the Ambassador of Italy to Bulgaria HE. Stefano Baldi

08 April 2019

Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova held a work meeting with the Ambassador of Italy to Bulgaria HE. Stefano Baldi. The two discussed the partnership between the two countries in tourism and their active presence in UN World Tourism Organization (WTO) initiatives at the UN.

Italy is a very important market for Bulgarian tourism and our bilateral relations have long traditions, especially in promoting cultural and historical routes and landmarks, stressed Minister Angelkova. She reported that nearly 158,000 Italian citizens visited our country last year as tourists, which ranked 15th in our inbound tourism ranking, and assured the diplomat that the department was working consistently to increase their numbers.

Minister Angelkova invited His Excellency and Italian Minister of Agriculture, Food, Forestry and Tourism Gian Marco Centinho to participate in the International Conference on Sustainable Tourism Investment, which the Ministry has organized at the end of May this year in Sunny Beach. A special guest of the forum will be Taleb Rifai, Secretary General of the WTO from 2009 to 2017. Our goal is to present Bulgaria not only as an interesting destination on the tourist map for four seasons, but also as a promising place for doing business and offering high quality tourist services, she said.

Ambassador Baldi congratulated Minister Angelkova and her team on the results achieved and presented various initiatives of the embassy that could attract tourists. Among them is an exhibition about Leonardo da Vinci, which will be presented to the National Library St. St. Cyril and Methodius in Sofia and in Bulgarian schools where Italian is taught. The interlocutors also discussed the cooperation between Plovdiv and Matera as European Capitals of Culture in 2019.

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