39 new visa centres, which will issue documents on the right to stay in Bulgaria, will be opened in Russia. This was announced by the Bulgarian foreign ministry. A contract has already been signed with an external service provider -EFS Global. Thus, the visa centres from which a pass for Bulgaria can be bought in Russia will total 59. The aim of the measure is to facilitate Russian tourists who are willing to visit Bulgaria to make the trip to the visa centres faster, easy and cheap.

However, in order to increase the traffic flow, disclosure of visa centres will not be enough, they are clear from the industry. More arrangements are needed to disclose more regular and charter airlines, as well as offering a good product. Today a two-way tourism forum will be held in Sofia, which is expected to take steps to increase the number of visitors from Russia. It will be attended by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Last year, 180,000 requests for visits to Russia were filed in Russia, including the number of multiple visas issued, the foreign ministry said. So far, visas for Bulgaria in Russia have been issued in 20 cities. Now the Russian tourist centre Sochi, as well as cities in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East, are now added to the places where Russian citizens can get documents for visiting Bulgaria.

Here is the full list of Russian cities in which visas will be issued for Bulgaria: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pskov, Kingshep, Ivangorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Ekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Veliki Novgorod, Rostov on Don, Voronezh, Samara, Novosibirsk, Kaliningrad, Saratov, Ufa, Perm, Vologoda, Smolyan, Khabarovsk, Novorossiysk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Petrozavodsk, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Chelyabinsk, Vyborg, Tyumen, Surgut, Volgograd, Bryansk, Mahakkila, Saransk, Tula, Ryazan, Tomsk, Chita, Ivanovo Kaluga, Novokuznetsk, Kirov, Sochi, Kurgan, Kursk, Lipetsk, Orenburg, Penzza, Ijevsk and Ulyanovsk.

Apart from Russia, the Foreign Ministry of Bulgaria has also taken measures to boost tourism and facilitate business partnerships by increasing the visa centres in China and India. Documents permitting the stay in Bulgaria will now be received in 15 Chinese cities and 16 Indian, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.