Borovets mountain resort management expects the occupation of the hotels in the complex to reach 100 per cent in the 2007/2008 winter season.

More than 82 per cent of the preliminary bookings in the resort were made by foreign tour-operators, mainly from the UK. Numerous tourists from Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Serbia and Macedonia were also expected.

Borovets Resort Group president Dimitar Dimitrov told Bulgarian news agency BTA that hotel owners planned to start attracting middle-class tourists.

The negative trend of poor and needy foreigners coming to the resort should be stopped, he said.

At the same time, the number of Bulgarian tourists visiting Borovets should increase.

All hotel owners supported Dimitrov’s opinion, he said.

Currently, Borovets had a capacity of 5 500 beds and resort management planned to increase the capacity to 8000 beds, BTA said. All hotels and social places in the resort were to receive ISO quality certificates from January 1 2008.

Georgi Koshtrov, chief tourism expert in Samokov municipality, said that traffic of construction and cargo vehicles in the resort was banned from December 15 2007 until March 15 2008.