site.btaBulgarian Hotel Association Insists on Immediate Halt to Trakia Motorway Repair Works before Summer Season Start

The Bulgarian Hotel Association (BHA) strongly objects to the large-scale ongoing repair works along the Trakia motorway, the Association wrote on Tuesday.

In an official letter to the Chair of the Road Infrastructure Agency's (RIA) Board, Yordan Valchev, the Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, Ivan Ivanov, and the Minister of Tourism, Miroslav Borshosh, the Association warns that normal traffic towards the Black Sea resorts is directly threatened by the continuing reconstruction on the eve of the active summer season.

“At the peak of preparations for the summer season, it is inadmissible to create artificial obstacles to the movement of tourists. The kilometers-long queues and wasted time will be the visiting card of the Bulgarian summer season,” Veselin Danev, Chair of the Bulgarian Hotel Association, said in the letter.

The Association insists on the immediate postponement of the reconstruction of the Trakia motorway until the end of the active summer season. If the postponement is not viable, a possible compromise would be the drastic acceleration of the reconstruction, since the present end date, June 30, 2025, is absolutely unacceptable and must be shortened, the organization said.

BHA underscores that road infrastructure is of utmost importance for the tourist branch, especially at the beginning of the season when the focus is on conference and congress tourism. According to data from the Association, Bulgarian guests in four- and five-star hotels in the past years manage to make up for the drop in traditional markets on the Bulgarian Black Sea.