Bulgaria Inside

By the end of the year, Plovdiv will have a second tourism center, head of the city's tourism council Liubozar Fratev said. The project will cost 30 000 leva and will be under the monitoring of Plovdiv municipality, dnesplus.bg reported.

The city's first tourism center services more than 10 500 people in 2007. More than 8200 tourists were foreigners.

In 2007, Plovdiv municipality decided to spend 620 000 leva on tourism development but slightly over 120 000 leva were actually used. The tourism council believes that the lack of administrative capacity for project execution led to the discrepancy. One way to solve the problem is to create a separate tourism committee in the municipality. The mayor promised to have such by the end of 2008.

Another tourism development in the city is the creation of three routes that will take visitors to various Plovdiv landmarks, plovdiv24.com reported. One of the routes will thematically bring together ancient monuments and the other two will be dedicated to the middle ages and the revival period.

The routes will be marked every 20 m and will offer additional explanation in special brochures. Each brochure will be issued in several languages and will feature numerous photos alongside the text.