News

From snowflakes to summer tan

Bansko, the largest winter sport resort on the Balkans, officially opened its summer tourist season on May 24.

Many of the hotels in the town in the foothills of Pirin National Park will be closed during the summer months, including the Moura, the Bansko and the Strazhite, which belong to Bansko ski zone concessionaire Ulen.

Others, such as the four-star Glazne Hotel, expect about 10 per cent of their rooms to be filled in June. An average 15 per cent of the capacity of all Bansko hotels will be occupied during the summer months, Kempinski Grand Arena Bansko sales manager Stefan von Scholheim told The Sofia Echo on May 25. Kempinski’s bookings, however, are above the average and it has the hightest share of the bookings.

“About half of the hotels are currently closed because the staff went to the seaside,” Bansko mayor Alexander Kravarov told a news conference on May 24. “This is not the way to make tourism. The problem is that the business also does not support the tourism enough, as 200 leva salary (for hotel employees) is not enough,” Kravarov said.

On May 23, there opened an exhibition by students from Plovdiv Academy for Music, Theatre and Pictorial Arts that took place in the Bansko chitalishte (community centre). It was also part of the Days of Bansko Traditions, which run on May 17 to 25.

A presentation of about 40 hotels followed, including four-, three- and two-star hotels, as well as family hotels that will be working during the summer season 2008.

Activities that can be practised in Bansko and the surrounding area during the summer months include hiking, biking and visiting the mountain lakes. Some hotels, such as the Kempinski Bansko, offer also quad biking, mountain guides, but also organised tours with buses to cultural and religious sites in the region and in Greece.

The town is currently trying to promote itself not only as place for winter sports, but also as an all-year-round destination. A museum of Paisii Hilendarski, a Bulgarian Revival hero, was built in the town, as he was born in Bansko. The other famous Bulgarian born in Bansko, revolutionary poet Nikola Vaptsarov, is commemorated in the other town museum.

There are several cultural events that are scheduled for the summer months in Bansko, Kravarov told The Sofia Echo on May 23. One is the folklore festival Between Three Mountains, which started on May 24. “Afterwards, we will hold a one-week theatre festival in July, to which we will invite the best theatres in the country,” he said. Yet another notable event is the jazz festival, which has already become a tradition, as well as the Pirin Folk Festival. Bansko will also host this year’s summer biathlon European Championships on August 13 to 17.

The gondola taking tourists to the higher parts of the mountain will only make two daily trips this summer: one in the morning, at 8am, and one in the afternoon, at 4.30pm. The other lifts will not work until the area of the ski runs is “re-cultivated”, a Ulen representative told the news conference. During the summer months, when there is not enough snow, the erosion on the ski runs is obvious and does not make the area of ski zone Bansko a pleasant place for tourists. Therefore, the company is planning to plant grass over the ski runs and to re-inforce them; after this it should also be open for visitors in the summer. The Environment and Water Affairs Ministry has approved the plans, Ulen said.

The local municipality had no estimate of how many bookings had already been made by tourists who wished to visit the town in summer 2008, Kravarov said. “According to our data, during the summer season last year, 200 000 people visited Bansko,” he said, which is considerably fewer than during the winter season. The data refers to the summer months between May and September.

“I think there is a very big gap in developing Bansko as a summer centre,” Kravarov said. “We keep in constant contact with the management of the tourism business and consider that environmental, cultural, and even the religious-historical tourism has to be developed and advertised more seriously,” he said. In terms of eco-tourism, the area of the Ulen nature reservation was of particular interest, as were the lakes high in the Pirin Mountains. There are also conditions for mountaineering, but it was more specific and required special training, Kravarov said.

June 2 2008, source:sofiaecho.com