The Ministry of Tourism has started a public procurement award procedure for 60 informative tours for the foreign media

More than 420 foreign tourists will visit Bulgaria within the journalist tours, initiated by the Ministry of Tourism. The public procurement procedure has been opened today and is titled „Organizing and conducting thematic tours for representatives of the print and electronic media and bloggers with specialized columns and broadcasts on tourism”. The procedure is divided into 12 lots, where each lot will be applied for by different tenderers, who will commit to provide representatives of the media of various reputable editions from the countries specified in the public procurement scope.

There will be 60 tours for representatives of leading media from over 50 markets that are important for our country. Among them are the UK, Ireland, France, the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, China, Japan, India, Israel etc. The official statistics data show that in the last year over 6,5 mln. tourists from the above countries visited Bulgaria.

Each tour will take into account the specifics of the respective market and will be aimed at showing the diversity of our country. Leading accent in the tours will be the given to eight cultural and historical destinations developed by the Ministry of Tourism. These thematic trips will allow the media to get acquainted with the numerous historical and cultural monuments in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian architecture, crafts and customs. The journalists will visit our large seaside and mountain resorts, as well as small settlements with well-developed environmental and rural tourism.

The experience acquired by many countries shows that the organizing of journalist and expedient tours is among the most efficient forms of advertising. Thanks to such tours the journalists get directly acquainted with the tourism opportunities offered by certain destinations and later they share their experiences though the media. In this way the potential tourists learn new and interesting facts from the first-hand source, which provokes the willingness to travel. The journalist tours are an extremely suitable and economically beneficial form of advertising tourism as they supplement the effect of the traditional communication channels. This is why the organizing of these tours is laid down as one of the major activities in the Annual Programme for National Advertising, which was reviewed in a meeting of the National Tourism Council in July 2015.

According to the provisions of the public procurement contracts, the selected contractors will bear all costs for the organizing of the tours, including airline tickets, hotel accommodation, transport, tour guides etc.