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Clash of the titans
Sofia Echo Com, 10.04.2005
HOTEL owners at the seaside are reportedly ready to clash with police if they have to, in order to finish the construction of hotels that are scheduled to accommodate their first guests this summer. The threat was made on April 5, and although it concerned only the resort of Slucnhev Bryag (Sunny Beach), it was evidence of how difficult the question of construction at resorts during season has become. Following last year's noise and dust that ruined the seaside holidays of many foreign tourists, state and municipal administrations said this year they would not allow construction work to continue after May 15. Now, just a month before the fixed deadline, hotel-keepers said that foreign tour operators had booked bedrooms in still-unfinished hotels. The continuing construction work is far from being the only problem that Bulgaria's tourist business faces. Another is that the country's tourism industry is suffering a serious staff deficit ahead of the start of the summer season. This was said by Mitko Dimitrov, head of the regional restaurateurs' association, in Dobrich on March 30. Officials are proposing that an initiative be launched to employ Bulgarians currently abroad – emigrants or members of Bulgarian ethnic minorities – in this country's tourist sector. Bulgarian vocational and high schools training tourism staff should open faculties in countries with compact Bulgarian communities like Moldova and Ukraine to solve the deficit, said Blagoi Ragin, chairman of the Bulgarian Association of Hotel-owners and Restaurateurs. In parallel to recruiting restaurateurs and hoteliers among Bulgarians abroad, the country should take steps to lure back specialists that it has trained and sent to internships aboard. The lack of qualified staff is most serious in high category hotels and restaurants. A total of 1300 new tourist sites will open on the Bulgarian northern Black Sea coast this summer season, Dimitrov said. The bed capacity of five-star hotels will increase by about 1200 beds after the opening of new Kempinski Grand Hotel Hermitage in Zlatni Pyasatsi (Golden Sands). Tourist staff deficit in 2004 in the northern Black Sea resorts stood at about 3000, according to association data. Speaking of high-class hotels, the UK-based Meridian Leisure Hotels launched on March 29 in Sofia the construction of the first Holiday Inn hotel in Bulgaria projected to cost more than 12 million euro. Meridian said it might soon build another hotel in Sofia. The company, one of the leading franchise partners of the world's biggest hotelier Intercontinental Hotels, will build the 14 000 sq m four-star Holiday Inn hotel in Business Park Sofia. The facility will have 131 bedrooms, a conference centre, spa centre and restaurants. Construction is due to be completed by the end of this year. "We are looking for another possibility, as our preference at this stage is for Sofia," Moez Janmohamed, group managing director of Meridian Leisure Hotels, told a news conference. The new hotel will face competition from the four- and five-star hotels in the city centre like the Radisson SAS, the Hilton, Sheraton, Kempinski Hotel Zografski, and the Grand Hotel Sofia. see source
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