Within the International tourist exhibition in Pamporovo named "Mountains of Bulgaria – hospitality in four seasons", the problems and opportunities faced by the Bulgarian tourism were discussed. The accent of the discussions was the possibility for the tourism in Bulgaria to become a year-round industry, by decreasing of the effect of season-related restrictions. 64 legal entity exhibitors and 27 municipalities are taking place in the eleventh issue of the market. Among the guests, there are representatives of Texas, the USA and Komotini, Greece.
A key factor for this sector is diversification which lies in the basis of the adopted Strategy for sustainable development of tourism in Bulgaria until 2030. Diversification of both the tourist products and services that Bulgaria offers with the increasing and profound interest to cultural historical tourism, SPA and wellness and opportunities for balneotherapy, as well as regarding generating markets. During the discussions it was pointed out that Bulgaria has already achieved a steady trend of over 50% of tourists coming to our country from the EU member-states.
A significant interest was shown to the conception of tourist zoning presented by prof. Vasil Marinov from Sofia University. The project is financed by MEE and realized jointly with a team of leading Bulgarian scientists and professors. During the meetings, discussions and out of the feed-back from municipalities, branch organizations and scientific circle, a high opinion was expressed about the conception, according to which 9 tourist regions are defined in Bulgaria, each one having its own uniqueness, specificity and leading types of tourism. In this way, some regions emblematic for Bulgaria, like the Valley of Roses and Rhodope Mountain appear again on the zoning map.
On the forum in Pamporovo, an analysis of the Institute of Marketing was presented, from which it became clear that, despite the bad season with regard to the weather, our tourism has been developing and Bulgaria was visited by 5,391 million foreign tourists from January to August 2014, which is 6% more than the same period of 2013. Revenue from international tourism into the current account of the balance of payment, according to BNB data, for the period of January – July 2014 has grown by 3.6% compared to the same period of 2013 and amounts 1,719 billion Euros.
The Institute of Marketing points out that the problem with the accountancy and the differentiation of the various types of visits by foreign tourists is due to the fact that bigger and bigger part of the bed base consists of so called "apart-house" construction, especially at the sea coast. According to the Institute of Marketing, urgent amendments in legislation are necessary in order to restrict the possibilities of the "apart-house" complexes to implement a hidden tourist activity, without paying due tax and making it difficult for the security authorities to implement their control functions in general.