Some mistakes in the Strategic Plan for Cultural Tourism in Bulgaria

As a first effort to create a national Strategy Plan for Development of Cultural Tourism, it is logical that some mistakes and gaps in the vision had occurred. As long as they are corrected and addressed in the near future, nothing bad will happen. My remarks below are not to trash the Plan. They aim to provide an external opinion from an international independent cultural tourism consultant, not involved in this project. It is like viewing a painting - to appreciate it you need to step some distance away.

Putting the cart before the horse

After creating the LoCus-es, which have more or less some logic, the team made the first mistake. They named the common theme for each LoCuS and decided that this naming will serve as a brand to the target markets and lead to a strategy planning. Needless to say that branding is based on strategy, not the other way around. Needless to say that the name doesn’t drive the branding – just the opposite. If a LoCuS doesn’t have a name yet, the name should be chosen after the strategy for the LoCuS is defined and after carefully choosing its marketing focus.

The mystery naming

The LoCuS-es were named a way that even the Bulgarians cannot understand. It is not obvious for the local people which region or group of places the superstar scientists are talking about. Leave alone the foreigners.  The Valley of the Thracian Kings, which already is “double branded” (the second brand, existing since the 50-s - The Valley of the Roses) was renamed “The Valley of the Kings” – a generic term, specially when in the neighboring Serbia there has its “Valley of the Kings”, although the “Kings” there are from different historic period. Is totally unclear why the Perpericon/Tatul area is called “The Sword and the Cross”, specially since another branding was done very recently calling the LoCuS “The Rock People”.

Another mystery is the “Stone Heart”. After reading the description of the LuCuS, I understood that that includes my hometown, Stara Zagora, Sliven and Yambol. Well, Sliven is part of the Valley of the Thracian Kings. Stara Zagora region characteristics are more similar to Plovdiv (Ancient Roman cultural heritage, the largest Roman glass collection in the country) an with the prehistoric development of the Balkans: the first copper mine in Europe, the Neolithic Dwellings (UNESCO Tentative List), the Karanovo Culture, the performing arts tradition (Firs provincial Opera in Bulgaria), the concentration of literary traditions (Stara Zagora is called the “City of Poets”), etc.. the region of Yambol is also an extension of the Valley of the Thracian Kings with its monumental Kabile cult complex.

Total mess, and the Strategic Plan not only doesn’t solve it, but doesn’t even bother to address the multi-branding of the same places, the absurdities in the marketing positioning of the places or the lack of a policy in the cultural tourism branding.

Lack of coordination with the general tourism Strategy of Bulgaria

That is one of the worst aspects of the new Strategic Plan. In the Strategy for Development of the Tourism of Bulgaria (good or bad, but existing and with a lot of programs already in place) there is a major component – the creation of tourism regions, which must be branded separately, like Tuscany in Italy or Les Châteaux de la Loire in France, or Andalucía in Spain. Well, these regions, except for Sofia, do not coincide with the LoCuS-es, and there is no coordination in policy directions.

The blanks on the map

Entire regions, such as Blagoevgrad Region, with the most visited UNESCO monument in Bulgaria, the Rila Monastery, is not included in any locus. Parts of the region falls under the Great Mountains, part is totally out of any locus. That includes all farther south-western part of Bulgaria, the border between Greece and Macedonia in the region of Petrich.

The technology aspects

No research was performed about use of technology by the cultural tourists, domestic, international to Bulgaria. The already available data published by the European Community was not used to determine the directions in which technology can help developing global strategy for positioning of the cultural tourism to Bulgaria. The technology, as a vehicle for communication and information is addressed very briefly in the Strategic Plan. The Territorial System for Local Cultural Identity is not linked with museum digitalization, doesn’t count on user created content. It also doesn’t define the use of technology as main marketing channel of communication for extending the markets of cultural tourism to Bulgaria. The few pilot projects outlined in the Strategic Plan, don’t mention the type of technology – Internet? Virtual reality? Augmented Reality? Search databases? etc. As a conclusion, the technologic as main driver of increasing the market geographies of the cultural tourism is missing and the existing outlines in the Strategic Plan stay in the 90-s of the 20th century.

The marketing aspects


Except for the clusters graphic above (click on the image for a larger size), there are few substantial directions on how to market the cultural tourism of Bulgaria to the domestic and foreign markets. Both policy makers and tour operators stressed the lack of marketing and advertising as one of the main problems of the Bulgarian cultural tourism. How the Strategic Plan addresses this? Well, it doesn’t. There is not single mention for a need of National Strategic Marketing Plan. There is not even an outline of what marketing differences will be addressed for the domestic and international markets, leave alone an analysis of the market segmentation for the Cultural Tourism by types of tourists, by country of origin, by mixed categories, such as spa-cultural markets, wine-tourism/cultural tourism routes (already defined in a recent project), etc..

Where is the Strategy?

Well, is missing. As per the Plan, the “themes” are driving force for each local government (which one? The LoCuS-es do not coincide with administrative regions or municipalities) behind the strategy. Meaning that the themes (which, as I have pointed out are very strangely named) are guiding the strategy. But really, where is the strategy, even if this weird method of monuments guiding strategic development is the best method to develop it?

There is not a single focus or directions given for development of the Bulgarian cultural tourism. The fact that the country has very diverse cultural heritage is not an excuse. The fact that a team of scientific superstars didn’t do their elemental cultural tourism research is not an excuse. The fact that they didn’t read the dozen national Cultural Strategy documents for other countries (here you can Download the US one, for example), is not an excuse. The fact that the plan failed to create directions for developing DESTINATIONS and REVENUE from the cultural assets of the country is the biggest failure of the effort. Because without these, there is not a strategy behind the 300+ pages of laundry lists of cultural sites and glaring generalities about the importance of the cultural tourism.

Keep reading to discover the unusual issues within the Strategic Plan

Graphic for market distribution and targeting is copyrighted under the EU copyright law and is permitted to be used only for research and non-for-profit documents.