Last week in Fitur, Mayoress Ángeles Muñoz announced that the Town Hall of Marbella signed an agreement with Persian Gulf tour operators at the International Tourism Fair (FITUR) held in Madrid. The Mayoress explained that this agreement “will help to promote tourism within the region, taking advantage of the air links between Spain and the Gulf countries that is aiding the flow of tourists. ”  [ Read More ]

Banks might hold the key to what will happen with Bulgaria’s real estate sector in 2010 if they decide to start selling foreclosed properties,  Address, one of Bulgaria’s leading real estate companies told a January 25 news conference. Together with foreign investors, banks were a major factor in the real estate boom in the previous five years, when banks fought for every customer by bringing down interest rates on loans.  [ Read More ]

About 800 Bulgarian, and other European lorries were allowed to pass through the Kulata-Promahon border crossing point after midnight on January 28 2010, Todor Georgiev, head of Border Police told the Bulgarian news agency (BTA). According to Bulgarian media reports, at the moment, traffic along three out of the four Greek-Bulgarian checkpoints (Kulata, Captain P Voivoda and Zlatograd) is normal. The blockade, which disrupted trains traveling from Bulgaria to Greece,  [ Read More ]

Bansko sees a moderate fall of snow in the next couple of days /more particularly 28th of January 2010 and 1st of February 2010/. Therefore, the heaviest snowfall is expected on the 29th of January 2010 during the night. It will be raining on the 30th of January. Light snow is expected on the 30th of January during the night. Temperatures will be below freezing (max -2°C on the 30th  [ Read More ]

TOURIST numbers fell by 8.7 per cent in Spain in 2009 as a result of the recession – a drop four times that of 2008, which was the first year in which holidaymaker figures had fallen for many years. But the country still saw 52.2 million foreigners travelling over to spend their holidays, according to research by the ministry of industry, tourism and commerce. British citizens remain top of the  [ Read More ]

Recovery in the Spanish property market is directly linked to the recovery of the country’s economy, but as Spain fails to shrug off the world recession, one of Spain’s leading appraisal companies is forecasting a difficult year ahead. Unemployment is expected to rise, and threats of EU sanctions against the country in respect of illegal land seizures and property demolition, are adding to the chains that hold Spain back from  [ Read More ]

The tourists visiting Morocco are up by 6% in October when compared to same period last year and a total of 7 million tourists visited Morocco in the year to October. According to the Moroccan tourism authorities, The French came first with 2.6 million, followed by Spaniards (1.5 million), Belgians (398,000), Germans (358,000) and Brits (297,000). The rise had no impact on the number of overnight stays which slipped by  [ Read More ]

Bulgaria’s Black Sea port city of Varna was home to the most expensive real estate in 2009, data from the National Statistics Institute (NSI) revealed on January 25 2010. While real estate prices decreased on all fronts across Bulgaria during the year, as a direct impact of the global economic downturn, properties in Varna were offered for as much as 1686 leva for a sq m, Dnevnik reported. Sofia came  [ Read More ]

The industry was not at its healthiest over the past 12 months for understandable reasons, but there are indications that the business outlook may be slightly more convenient for potential buyers and sellers. The most “popular” price-tags for real estate in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia and the third largest city in the country, Varna, for the final quarter of 2009 were in the range of about 40 000 euro, Address real  [ Read More ]

Bulgaria was battered by extreme weather conditions over the past 24 hours, with temperatures reportedly plummeting to a record -32C in the north east. Dobrich saw the mercury dip down to -26C while 17 other municipalities across Bulgaria reported that temperatures went below -23C. In some towns in the north of the country, Pleven, Rousse and Elhovo, temperatures dropped to their lowest since 1933, Dnevnik daily reported on January 26  [ Read More ]