Is there an Economic Crisis on the Bulgaria Sea Coast this Summer?

At the beginning of the summer, there was a serious discussion about the crisis of summer tourism in the country. The discussion began in late June and early July, that is, it focused entirely on the state of summer tourism in June. The main ones are that 1) the summer tourism in June is in crisis (the beaches are empty) and 2) the Bulgarians are fleeing the native Black Sea coast and massively prefer Greece (congestion at the border). Today we already have the NSI data for tourism in June and we can shed light on how much the above statements are true.

Let's start with some clarifications. First, we will be able to comment on the summer season as a whole when we have data for June, July, and August - June is the weakest of the three months and does not always accurately predict events during the season. However, the broad discussion of the June events deserves a reasoned response with data. Secondly, we use the official NSI data for all accommodation units with more than 10 beds - the smaller single beds do not fit here, which hides some of the data, especially for the nights spent by Bulgarians. Third, we are focusing not on the general data for the country, but specifically on tourism in the sea regions - these are Bourgas, Varna, and Dobrich. In places, we collect Varna and Dobrich as indicative of the North relative to the South (Burgas). The specific indicator we are looking at is not just the number of overnights, but the actual nights spent in accommodation in the three areas - can be seen as an indicator of tourist man-days at sea.

Before we get into the details of tourism in June 2019, it is good to make two general observations. The first is that summer tourism in Bulgaria is much more dependent on foreigners compared to Bulgarians. The...

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