I (Lucy McCombes) have recently returned from speaking at a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria on The Business Case for Responsible Tourism. I was invited to attend by the organisers, the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum who we have been working with to submit a EU funding proposal to support a network of organisations in Eastern Europe wanting to take a more responsible approach to tourism development.
The conference was successful in bringing a range of stakeholders together and it was a very interesting insight into the experience of trying to deliver responsible tourism in the face of some serious challenges. On the second day three developers who are working on ski, sea and golf resorts were put under the spotlight by the “international experts” to answer questions on what they were doing in practice in terms of responsible tourism which led to vibrant debate.
During the conference the Bulgarian Association of Alternative Tourism (www.baatbg.org) and Odysseia-In Travel Agency (www.odysseia-in.com) were very welcoming and kindly took the time to show me a few sites of Sofia. They are doing a lot of great work on the ground in rural and mountain areas which is well worth taking a look at. All in all the conference was a great opportunity to start to get to know our Bulgarian partners in person and hopefully we will be hearing more from them in the future.
Former ICRT student, Veronica Tonge, who has founded www.responsibleskiing.com, also went down very well as there was a great deal of discussion about how skiing can be made responsible and she made some useful contacts who were interested in her work in this area.
On the last day I was lucky enough to have some time being a tourist in Sofia which included stopping off at the Russian market outside the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral to buy a painting of an icon….I chose St Christopher – the patron saint of travel! (see photograph)