Overview and analysis of the main tourist regionalizations of Bulgaria

Abstract

Tourist regionalization is a kind of sectoral, targeted regionalization for the needs of tourism. Like any other regionalization, it has two main aspects – scientific-theoretical and practical. In both cases, the need to establish a specific territorial basis on which to draw scientific-theoretical results is recognized, as well as to regionalize the specifics of tourist products and markets in the different parts of the country. The problems of tourist regionalization have been brought to the attention of a number of specialists in the field of tourism science and economic geography. Until now, about a dozen options for tourism regionalization have been created. In 1968 E. Lozanov offered the first scheme of 7 regions. Another scheme, comprised of 4 complex or integral regions, was presented by M. Bachvarov in 1970. The next tourist regionalization of Bulgaria was carried out by a team of the founder of Department of Geography of Tourism at the Faculty of Geology and Geography of the St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University – Prof. L. Dinev in 1973. One year later Dinev offered a taxonomic scheme for complex tourist regionalization. Later Bachvarov and Tonchev offered their scheme of regions, called resort-touristic regions. In 2008 the former State Tourism Agency created another regional scheme included in the Project for National Strategy for Sustainable Development of Tourism in Bulgaria.

In addition to these schemes for complex tourist regions, there are also more specialized regional schemes, for example, for the purpose of cultural and cultural-historical tourism. Such a scheme was proposed by a team of Prof. Dulevski in 2009 and was adopted by the Council of Ministers. As early as 1979 Bulgaria’s cultural and historical heritage was presented in the Unified Territorial Plan of Bulgaria in not very well-structured territorial forms, but they are the first attempt to create a cultural-historical scheme, including a number of often nearby situated natural attractions.

A new regional configuration was approved by the Council of Ministers in 2009 as a result of the work of a large Bulgarian-Italian team of historians, archaeologists, architects and other specialists and it covers 300 most important archaeological and cultural-historical sites.

By analogy with the concept of transport corridors the team of Prof. T. Krastev created his territorial scheme of the main sites of the Bulgarian cultural-historical heritage and introduced the concept of “national cultural roads”.

As a method the comparative critical analysis of the main types of tourism regionalizations of Bulgaria is used. The starting materials are the individual schemes of tourist regionalizations. As a result of the analysis an evaluation of the existing tourist region schemes was made, as the author also offered his scheme of cultural-historical tourist regions.