The Good
The effort to create a national strategy for cultural tourism is great. And even if it is not for the first time that a country creates similar strategic document to serve policy makers, as suggested H.E. the Ambassador to Bulgaria, Mr. Stefano Benazzo, still the Strategic Plan remains a very worthy task. What I like in the plan?
The people
The Strategic plan was prepared using both national and foreign experts. Italy, the country with most cultural tourism in the world – provided experts in historic heritage of great renown, such as Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the Archaeological Superintendent of Pompeii. Another dozen of historical heritage superstars from Italy traveled across Bulgaria to become familiar with the historical heritage assets of the country.
They were a few Bulgarian specialists assisting the project, but all of them are top level – from the current Deputy Minister of Culture, Dr. Todor Chobanov, the Minister and Director of National Museum of History, Prof. Bojidar Dimitrov, museum directors, a policy makers in the tourism (Prof. Mariana Aseova) and other famous Bulgarians involved in historic preservation policy. Local government, mayors of cities and towns were interviewed, as well as travel agencies executives and owners.
Methodology – mystery visiting
Ten thousand (!) km (approx. 6.3 thousand miles) and 400 sites later the 30 foreign specialists who didn’t have a clue before the trips about the historical riches of Bulgaria created a database duly describing, photographing and classifying all places visited. One by one – from the most prominent to the most obscure A Sisyphean task and a great foundation to know what are your assets, when you decide to produce a strategic plan.
The team also assembled other specialists from the fields of tourism marketing, regional development and infrastructure experts. That translates into an array of famous Italian architects, engineers and academia of tourism development.
The approach
The main approach of the Strategic Plan is identify and group the historic heritage sites in LoCuS-es (an acronym from Local Cultural System and the Latin name of “locus” - place). As in the mathematical definition, these are collection of points which share a common property. In the case of the Strategic plan, the group, which prepared it, identified 13 LoCuS-es with high concentration of similar for each locus cultural tourism assets. They were grouped mainly by historical similarities (period, type of monuments, etc.) and geographical proximity, themes and target markets.
As per the Plan’s definition, LoCuS is:
The goals
The entire exercise was obviously made with one idea in mind: to help policy makers to create year-by-year development plans for the cultural tourism in Bulgaria. Identifying the LoCus-es would help, as per own words of the Strategic Plan’s creators to adopt the following strategic directions of action:
The Integrated Communication System
This is the best idea in the Strategic Plan. It is based on defining the Cultural Tourism Identity System for Bulgaria. This section also addresses the print, multimedia and very briefly (as a part of a sentence) Internet advertising. In the entire plan, it is the only mention of marketing communications for the cultural tourism.
The Technology aspects
The plan defines the functions of a Territorial Information System for the Bulgarian Local Identity. This system will have the following elements:
The Clusters and the Action Plan – the icing of the cake
After analyzing the LoCuS-es, the project team decided to create groups of clusters to show how these concentrations of places will play to different markets – local, neighborhood and international. The result is this diagram:
The effort to create a national strategy for cultural tourism is great. And even if it is not for the first time that a country creates similar strategic document to serve policy makers, as suggested H.E. the Ambassador to Bulgaria, Mr. Stefano Benazzo, still the Strategic Plan remains a very worthy task. What I like in the plan?
The people
The Strategic plan was prepared using both national and foreign experts. Italy, the country with most cultural tourism in the world – provided experts in historic heritage of great renown, such as Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the Archaeological Superintendent of Pompeii. Another dozen of historical heritage superstars from Italy traveled across Bulgaria to become familiar with the historical heritage assets of the country.
They were a few Bulgarian specialists assisting the project, but all of them are top level – from the current Deputy Minister of Culture, Dr. Todor Chobanov, the Minister and Director of National Museum of History, Prof. Bojidar Dimitrov, museum directors, a policy makers in the tourism (Prof. Mariana Aseova) and other famous Bulgarians involved in historic preservation policy. Local government, mayors of cities and towns were interviewed, as well as travel agencies executives and owners.
Methodology – mystery visiting
Ten thousand (!) km (approx. 6.3 thousand miles) and 400 sites later the 30 foreign specialists who didn’t have a clue before the trips about the historical riches of Bulgaria created a database duly describing, photographing and classifying all places visited. One by one – from the most prominent to the most obscure A Sisyphean task and a great foundation to know what are your assets, when you decide to produce a strategic plan.
The team also assembled other specialists from the fields of tourism marketing, regional development and infrastructure experts. That translates into an array of famous Italian architects, engineers and academia of tourism development.
The approach
The main approach of the Strategic Plan is identify and group the historic heritage sites in LoCuS-es (an acronym from Local Cultural System and the Latin name of “locus” - place). As in the mathematical definition, these are collection of points which share a common property. In the case of the Strategic plan, the group, which prepared it, identified 13 LoCuS-es with high concentration of similar for each locus cultural tourism assets. They were grouped mainly by historical similarities (period, type of monuments, etc.) and geographical proximity, themes and target markets.
As per the Plan’s definition, LoCuS is:
- A system based on historical, cultural, ethnic and natural identity of different places: LOCAL
- Aimed to attract visitors interested in knowing the cultural values of cities, regions and countries, different from their own, and thus to satisfy their needs for new information and cultural encounters – CULTURAL
- Integrated combination of cultural heritage resources, traditions, visual and performing arts, creative industries and linked among themselves with a common territory, development strategy and target market – SYSTEM.
So far, so good. The approach is great. Here is the complete map of the LoCuS-es, as per the report. Please click on the image to enlarge.
The goals
The entire exercise was obviously made with one idea in mind: to help policy makers to create year-by-year development plans for the cultural tourism in Bulgaria. Identifying the LoCus-es would help, as per own words of the Strategic Plan’s creators to adopt the following strategic directions of action:
- Extend the LoCuS “Great Sofia” (this one is clear - the capital of Bulgaria and its surroundings)
- Redirecting the interest from the Black Sea Cost, which is over populated, over visited, over built, to the other regions of the country
- Improve the profile of the visitor to Bulgaria from the current low middle class and working class to higher middle class and luxury travel tourist
- Rejuvenation of the international tourism to the country
- Taking advantage from the North-South traffic across the Bulgaria.
- Increasing the sense of national identity among the young Bulgarians.
The Integrated Communication System
This is the best idea in the Strategic Plan. It is based on defining the Cultural Tourism Identity System for Bulgaria. This section also addresses the print, multimedia and very briefly (as a part of a sentence) Internet advertising. In the entire plan, it is the only mention of marketing communications for the cultural tourism.
The Technology aspects
The plan defines the functions of a Territorial Information System for the Bulgarian Local Identity. This system will have the following elements:
- Creating virtual catalogs – developing and archiving multimedia information
- GIS
- Internet technologies
The Clusters and the Action Plan – the icing of the cake
After analyzing the LoCuS-es, the project team decided to create groups of clusters to show how these concentrations of places will play to different markets – local, neighborhood and international. The result is this diagram:
The action plan is defined in the next table:
These are the highlights of the positive aspects of the Plan. Now, if you want, see some negative issues by following this link...
