Every year more British skiers flood Bulgaria’s high-altitude mountain resorts, attracted by the well-managed slopes and low prices in the small Balkan country that aims to join the European Union next year.
A two-hour drive south from the capital Sofia gets you to the most popular Bansko ski resort, where numerous construction sites testify to tourism’s rapid development on the Pirin mountain slopes.
Five years ago a private company poured $40-million into skiing infrastructure on the slopes overlooking the small mountainous town of Bansko, to turn it into Bulgaria’s most modern winter-tourism and sports site.
“Bulgaria offers an enormous business potential with its bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics and the European Union accession,” says Tim Savva, a Briton running a property agency in Bansko.
Crowded around him, three Englishmen in their twenties and a Dutch ski enthusiast need no more encouragement. They are all interested in acquiring a holiday apartment in Bansko that will cost some $1Â 070 per square-metre.
Despite the extensive construction work, Bansko has managed to preserve its charm, with chalets jostling traditional taverns along its steep, winding streets.
Still, local businessmen and travel agents are already adjusting to the English taste. At the White Magic downtown cafe, the menu features Yorkshire pudding, beef stew and “the best English breakfast in town”.
“Bulgaria is like Andorra — high-quality skiing at low prices,” says Janet, a visiting Londoner.
All costs included, with the flight here, a week in a four-star hotel, pool and spa, plus a week-round ski tow pass come to â,¬800. Nothing like the prices in the Alps, says this middle-aged skier.
Some French ski-slope masters coming to Bansko were also surprised to find “an ultra-modern resort” complete with high-speed ski-lifts and artificial snow.
“They have extraordinary snowfields and if the whole thing works it will be good competition, especially price-wise,” says “Tchenko”, director of the Snow-fun English skiing school in Val d’Isère, who has brought a dozen foreign investors, mostly Britons, to Bansko.
Jean-Louis Leger-Mattei, director of the tourism office of Alpe d’Huez, adds that the British are always the “forerunners” in all hot skiing destinations. “These new markets are going to suck in all British clients who, like all skiers, love resort-hopping,” he says.
Nelly Sandalska, director of the Balkan tourist agency and a former tourism minister, says the British are already “Bulgaria’s top-targeted tourist market”, with the number of direct flights between Sofia and London fast increasing.
Flooded with customers, Bulgaria’s four major skiing resorts in the Rila and Pirin mountains, and one on Vitosha mountain overlooking Sofia, are aiming high.
At the prospect of becoming one of the major venues in Bulgaria’s 2014 Winter Olympics bid, the country’s oldest Rila mountain resort, Borovetz, has pursued a large-scale government project called “Super Borovetz”, aiming to triple its beds to 18Â 000 by 2010.
“The ski-runs, tows and lifts need to follow suit,” says Leger-Mattei,.
The number of British tourists who visited the Bulgarian Black-Sea coast last summer was 36% up on the previous year, reaching some 374Â 000.
This put the Brits third on the visitors’ list, behind Bulgaria’s neighbouring Greek (666Â 000) visitors, and, of course, the Germans (582Â 000).
There has also been a marked influx of British property-buyers in the country’s mountain villages and on the Black Sea coast in the last few years. — AFP