OVER-TOURISM: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE RISE OF SUNNY BEACH BULGARIA

Coastal tourism destinations around the globe are chasing and face an increase in arrivals. The prevailing paradigm in tourism development is focused on “the more, the better” concept. International bodies, national and local governments, and stakeholders are working toward future growth in numbers with little to no attention to the impact of mass tourism on the destination’s image, tourist satisfaction, and related socioenvironmental matters. This paper employing a case study approach to investigate the phenomenon of over-tourism in the most popular and famous coastal resort in Bulgaria Sunny Beach, and how current pro-growth policies affect the destination development and the destination image. This research is using qualitative methods, namely analysis of documents, analysis of relevant literature, and on-the-spot observations. Results of the research exposing that the Bulgarian government and the tourism stakeholders are ignoring the existence of over-tourism and the consequential impacts. A revision of present strategies, policies, and practices are necessary for assessing the tourism components as time and duration of stay, expenditures, the purpose of visit and destinations carrying capacity. In conclusion, such knowledge may ultimately contribute to addressing over-tourism issues and implications in Bulgarian coastal resort of Sunny Beach, while constructing a more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable destination.


INTRODUCTION
Globally, international tourist arrivals grew by seven percent to reach 1.4 billion in 2018 compared to 2017, expecting the number of tourists to reach 1.8 billion in 2030 (World Tourism Organization, 2019). In Europe alone, the growth of tourists (overnight visitors) in 2018 is eight percent or an increase of 55 million tourists more, compared to 2017. The issue of over-tourism, caused by social media influence, DMOs, governmental, and stakeholders' policies, is a challenge that many coastal destinations around the world are facing (Séraphin, Zaman, Olver, Bourliataux-Lajoinie, & Dosquet, 2019). Coastal areas share the most significant part of this growth, being the leading tourism destinations, and coastal tourism is the most considerable in terms of importance as an income generator. "Over-tourism" is a relatively new term, that describes a situation where residents and visitors feel that there are too many tourists, as a result of which the quality of their life and the quality of experience gained by tourists deteriorates sharply, the destination loses its authenticity (World Tourism Organization, 2019). Therefore, there is a sound correlation between the number of visitors, the type and time frame of their visit, and the carrying capacity of a destination.
Two factors are of utmost importance in recognising over-tourism -tourism density (tourists/km 2 ) and tourism intensity (tourists/locals), as shown in Figure 1 (Capocchi, Vallone, Amaduzzi, & Pierotti, 2019). At the same time, governments and tourism boards around the world have firm confidence that the higher the number of arrivals, the better for the destination and the country's development. Given the pro-growth paradigm, the question is to what extent the government and stakeholders will continue to look at increasing arrivals?   (Agyeiwaah, 2019). In 2017 57.6% of total nights spent by tourists were in the Bulgarian coastal regions, while the area is occupying 5.2% of the country's territory and 8.85% of the population (NSI, 2018). The population density in Bulgaria's coastal municipalities is estimated to be 223 people/km 2 on average (within 10 km of the coastline), but during the peak of the season in particular areas increase over 320% (NSI, 2011). Such a colossal disproportion of visitor/inhabitant ratio, induced by the government tourism strategies, is the main contributing factor for the over-tourism in Sunny Beach. Indeed, the development and marketing policies of Bulgaria and Sunny Beach as the most prominent coastal resort over the past two decades as an attractive place for a holiday has been beneficial if the increasing number of visitors is the primary assessment instrument (Vurnek, Brozinčević, Čulinović, & Novosel, 2018). The study focuses on Sunny Beach development as a coastal tourist destination.
The goal of the study is to analyse and to derive the main contextual factors contributing to the image of the destination as well as to propose principles and policies for the successful and sustainable development of the destination. The study examines the current national and international tourism destination development policies, their implementation, and their effect on the destination. The main research questions are: 1. What is over-tourism?
2. How the current tourism development policies contribute to the arising overtourism in Sunny Beach?

RESEARCH METHODS
To answer the above-stated research questions, the authors chose to employ a qualitative case study approach (Harrison, Birks, Franklin, & Mills, 2017;Merriam & Tisdell, 2016;Tetnowski, 2015). Case studies are an adequate and appropriate in-depth investigation method, when complicated phenomena, as over-tourism, is under study.
Authors perfomed the data gathering through a comprehensive analysis of related tourism development policies and practices adopted on a national and international level. The technique was finding, selecting, understanding and synthesising information from the documents. The documents that were analysed were mainly researchers' papers, online articles, organisational and institutional reports and books.   The initial idea of Sunny Beach is to be a resort for family tourism, where visitors can enjoy the sea and relax in vast green zones, build in unity and harmony with the hotels, and at the time was promoted and recognised by visitors as such. By the end of the 90s, the buildings (including hotels, restaurants, clubs, and bars) are occupying only 20% of the territory of the resort, and the rest were walkways, parks and green zones.
Nowadays, building density already has a range of over 80%, and the former green zones are a pale memory. In recent years, marketing strategies of Sunny Beach are targeting at young foreign tourists (predominantly from EU-member state countries) looking for entertainment, predominantly drugs, sex, and alcohol (Anastassova, 2011;Tutenges, 2015). Planned as a resort with for up to 30 000 tourists, now Sunny Beach has more than 160 000 beds, according to the official data (National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria, 2018). Numerous publications in Bulgarian mass media (TV, newspapers, and magazines), as well as authors' observations, claim that, in fact, the beds are more than 300 000, and the former green resort is popular among Bulgarians as a "concrete jungle." The "boom" in the development began in 1998 after the deregulation of urban and territorial planning, privatisation and not the least the ease of travelling, generated by the rise of low-cost carriers (Simancas Cruz & Peñarrubia Zaragoza, 2019).
Although the signs of over-tourism in Sunny Beach are evident, especially during peak times, this does not create a sense of concern in the government and tourism business (Kotler, Bowen, & Makens, 2009). The adverse effects caused by overtourism, soundly visible in the resort, are related to drugs and alcohol abuse, prostitution, clogged infrastructure, and destruction of natural landmarks such as dunes Social media and ICT robustly and substantially impacting tourists behaviour.
From smartphones to smart homes, digital technology is playing a significant role in people's lives and transforming progressively into the way people perceive a given destination. Visitors and residents express how they feel in social media such as Instagram, Facebook, and TripAdvisor, which in return significantly impact and influence on how people travel and where they "decide" to go (Muler Gonzalez, Coromina, & Galí, 2018). ICT, reduced travel time and costs, and peer-to-peer online accommodation services are also major contributing factors. As a result, Sunny Beach, located in highly "instagrammable" and picturesque spot on Bulgarian Black sea coastline, is attracting predominantly party-loving youngsters, seeking wild parties, inexpensive drugs, drinks, and sex. Bar crawls trips, strip clubs and even drug prices (  The term "tourism carrying capacity" (TCC), despite its subjectivity and lack of unified definition, is revealing the following link between the visitors and the destination (Sati, 2018;Sharma, 2016). TCC refers to the stage, where numbers of visitors exceed the destination's capacity ( Figure 6) which, in return, generate negative impressions and feedback from visitors, and simultaneously may cause irreversible damages to the environment, and denial from the local population, exposed to the crowds (Ansofino, 2019;Milano, 2017). As per the initial development plan, the carrying capacity of Sunny Beach is determined to be 30,000 beds. Currently, the resort capacity is extending to over 300,000 beds (although the official data from NSI states, that the beds are a bit over 160,000), which gives a beach availability of 0.4m2 per visitor, while the Bulgarian Territorial Management Regulation requires at least 8m2 per person.
The subjective nature of TCC and the lack of sound definition makes the assessment extremely challenging. TCC of each destination vary massively, and the effects are primarily psychological, yet interrelated to the environmental, social, economic, and political aspects of tourism. The characteristics of the destination and type of tourists are in strong interaction when determining visitors' effect and impact on the destination and whether the destination is struggling to cope with visitors or not (Muler Gonzalez et al., 2018). Proper evaluation tools to determine when a destination is suffering from over-tourism are still under discussion among scholars and institutions on an international level (Llausàs, Vila-Subirós, Pueyo-Ros, & Fraguell, 2019).
It is a positive step that the EU parliament recently recognises and consider overtourism as an imminent threat to the future of the tourism industry, that need immediate measures. However, Bulgarian government and tourism businesses and stakeholders demonstrate staggering ignorance to see beyond the increase of arrivals' number, which resulted in the current over-crowded and over-urbanised state in Sunny Beach.
Being developed as a family resort, nowadays, the marketing and the promotion of Sunny Beach is entirely toward as a party destination, where rules and local laws are widely ignored, except with some sporadic actions, against the noise pollution, and tax and labour law violations. Given measures have little to no effect, and according to Bulgarian on-line media are seeking primarily political dividends, rather than improving the situation and the perceived image of Sunny Beach.

CONCLUSION
Aiming at the future development and sustainability of Sunny Beach as a popular coastal resort can not be possible without examining and addressing the impact of overtourism and the consequences for the destination. The initial impression is that Sunny Beach is experiencing over-tourism with all of the latter's impacts -environmental, social, economic, and political. The complexity and multidimensionality of these impacts, as they represent the unity of various aspects of the tourism components, make it difficult for recognition and assessment.
At present, the national tourism development policies, strategies, and measures implemented in the development of Sunny Beach are still focused on increasing the visitors, thus ignoring and even denying that over-tourism is already manifesting itself.
Despite some government efforts, performed recently, their efficiency still seems weak, fragmented, and there is no particular proof of a comprehensive plan to address the problems. Furthermore, it seems that all parties involved in Sunny Beach's development and marketing -DMOs, tourism business, stakeholders, and policymakers, are not considering the over-tourism as an issue, which hampers the understanding and preventing the over-tourism. Therefore, over-tourism problems are likely to continue to occur within such a mindset, impacting, and leading to future degradation and diminishing the image of Sunny Beach as a quality leisure destination. There is a need for re-evaluating the current "pro-growth" paradigm where success is not entirely measured in arrivals, but on seeking enhancement of the offered tourism products and services. Regardless of the still relatively low number of destinations affected by over-tourism, the impact of over-tourism is potentially critical to the extent, where a destination could suffer the loss of its uniqueness and attractiveness. An alternative to "pro-growth" paradigm is optimisation -a destination marketing and development, aiming at sustaining -or even decreasing -arrivals' numbers and increasing return through offering alternatives, such as unique activities, specific to the destination and neighbouring areas. Despite some indications that shorter length of stay can lead to higher expenditure per day, policies supporting more extended stay might affect distribution positively across the destination -tourists visiting adjacent areas, attractions, and places of interest, thus resulting in a longer length of stay. Not the least, government, DMOs, policymakers, and stakeholders should guarantee that offered products and services are sustainable in terms of energy use, waste management, and other adverse environmental effects and assuring protection against activities leading to rising a negative social, financial and environmental impacts.
In order for a destination to thrive and to develop the tourism sustainably, government, tourism planning authorities, entrepreneurs, investors, legislators, and community groups need to understand to what extent the destination can accommodate future anticipated tourism growth and the resulting challenges and opportunities that the destination may encounter. Government and decision-makers with the involvement of all stakeholders must create long-term plans, taking into account the needs of both visitors and residents at the centre of investment and destination development plans.
Some of the measures, that might be considered involve: regulating and limiting the number of tourists' arrivals; using digital technologies to prevent the congestions in real time; extending the season and shifting the promotion's focus and target; promoting less-visited attractions in the vicinity of Sunny Beach and developing new attractions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are deeply grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, suggestions and feedback that have contributed to improve this paper. cheatsheet-things-you-must-know-before-going-sunny-beach-bulgaria/