2 April 2008 | Around 10,000 Romanian tourists are expected to come to Bulgaria’s northern Black Sea coast over the Orthodox Easter holidays, Bulgarian daily Standart reported.

The Orthodox Easter, celebrated by an overwhelming part of the two countries’ populations, this year falls more than a month after the Catholic one – on April 27. Easter Monday will also be a national holiday in both Romania and Bulgaria.

The Romanian tourists are expected to spend around 1,2 million euro during their three-day Easter vacation, Stoyan Marinov, head of Tourexpo, the joint-stock company of Varna’s Tourist Chamber, told Standart.

The average all-inclusive price per day in the Romanians’ favoured hotels in the port city of Varna and the resorts Golden Sands and Saint Konstantin and Elena is between 30 and 40 euro. This is 30 to 40 per cent lower than prices in Romanian hotels.

The number of Romanians who spent their holidays in Bulgaria last year reached 750,000. After the two countries joined the EU in January 2007, just until the end of September, it grew by over 100 per cent, replacing Greeks as the most numerous visitors to Bulgaria.

Despite the influx of Romanians over the Easter and summer holidays last year, their numbers over Christmas and New Year proved unexpectedly low.

In order to guarantee this won’t happen again, the Bulgarian hotel and tour operators have been preparing attractive package offers since the beginning of the year.

While the Romanians were reportedly satisfied with the quality of the Bulgarian hotels and the service, according to Standart, they complained of a lack of parking in the resorts, resulting in their cars’ being towed away. Meetings between hotel operators, the Varna municipality and other parties are planned in order to address the problem before the upcoming holiday.

Standart reported that the Albena resort, also at Bulgaria’s northern Black Sea coast, will begin this summer operation of regular and charter bus lines from Bucharest, Constanţa and Cluj, as a 20 to 30 per cent increase of Romanian visitors to the resort is expected, according to Margita Todorova, its sales manager.

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