Bulgaria has spent years competing on price alone. Now, it’s losing that fight to Albania, and – of all places – the country everyone keeps comparing it to for what’s going wrong is Portugal.
Bulgaria never fully rebuilt its tourism sector after COVID-19, even though it was one of the more liberal countries in the region regarding pandemic restrictions.
And the comparisons piling up around its summer product aren’t kind: increasingly, its Black Sea offering is being measured against Albania’s. Bulgaria isn’t winning that comparison.
Industry observers have a blunt term for what Bulgaria is doing: running a race to the bottom. The strategy is simple – be the cheapest sun-and-sea option on the market.
The problem is just as simple: that race has no finish line.
For decades, Turkey undercut everyone. Now it’s Albania’s turn, offering European travelers the same beach holiday for less.
The result: fewer travelers are choosing Bulgaria’s coast at all. So where exactly is Bulgaria losing this fight?
The Portugal Test
Look at Portugal, and the failure comes into focus. The two countries have more in common than their geography suggests.
Portugal anchors the southwest corner of Europe; Bulgaria anchors the southeast. Both carried, for decades, a reputation as the “poorer cousin” of their region.
Both have climate, coastline, and scenery working in their favor – Portugal edges ahead on weather (Algarve), Bulgaria on mountains (Bansko).
And yet Portugal – specifically Madeira and Lisbon – has spent the last 10 to 15 years turning itself into a global magnet for tourists, remote workers, and wealthy expats.
Bulgaria hasn’t come close. That gap isn’t luck. It’s strategy: sharp branding, a clear identity, and a lifestyle package that happens to be one of the most in-demand products on Earth right now.
Bulgaria isn’t short on raw material. It has striking nature, deep history, low taxes, and cheap living. What it doesn’t have is a story to sell – and it shows.
Portugal Sold a Lifestyle. Bulgaria Sold a Party.
This is where the gap is widest. Madeira built its brand around wellbeing: ocean-adjacent living, safety, slow mornings, social tolerance, a cult of calm.
Think walks along the levadas, coffee by the water, surfing, and environmental care – an entire identity built on stillness and a lack of stress.
That pitch pulled in tens of thousands of high-earning professionals from the US, the UK, and Western Europe: educated, ambitious, and financially loaded people who brought skills and capital with them wherever they landed.
Bulgaria, a country that likes to describe itself around traditional family values, ended up exporting something else entirely: cheap alcohol, all-night parties, concrete sprawl, and chaos.
Sunny Beach built its whole identity around budget tourism – a strategy that made sense when Bulgaria was poor. It doesn’t anymore.
Bulgarian living standards are catching up fast with the rest of Europe, and the old playbook is now actively costing the country money.
What’s missing is a culture of “premium simplicity” – the understated cafés, walkable streets, and wellness-driven communities that wealthier travelers actually pay for.
Madeira Built an Ecosystem. Bulgaria Left It to Chance.
In 2021, mid-pandemic, Madeira’s regional government partnered with private entrepreneurs to launch Digital Nomads Madeira in the small town of Ponta do Sol – free internet, coworking spaces, organized community events, real support for foreign arrivals.
Within months, the island filled up with high-earning engineers, founders, and creatives. It wasn’t just an economic win – it rebranded the entire island from “retirement destination” to one of Europe’s trendiest places to work remotely.
Bulgaria has its own version of this story – Bansko – and it’s proof of what the country could do, if it tried. Bansko became a genuine hit with digital nomads.
But that happened almost entirely through private initiative: grassroots festivals, independent coworking spaces, and word of mouth. The state didn’t build that. It barely noticed it. And it never scaled the idea into a national strategy.
The Policy Gap, In One Table
Attracting wealthy expats takes more than nice mountains – it takes a system built for them to actually move in.
| Portugal & Madeira | Bulgaria | |
| Remote-work visas | Clear, fast Digital Nomad Visa (D8) and passive-income visa (D7) | A bureaucratic maze for non-EU applicants from the US and UK |
| Tax regime | Non-Habitual Resident (NHR) status – major tax relief for up to 10 years | A competitive 10% flat tax – undercut by zero information or support to navigate it |
| National branding | Decades of consistent positioning as “Europe’s Silicon Valley,” anchored by the Web Summit | Scattered messaging, no clear target audience, no consistency |
Bulgaria’s Infrastructure Problem Is a First-Impression Problem
Public space is where Bulgaria’s gap with Portugal becomes physically visible. Even a tiny village in Madeira has clean sidewalks, the country’s signature calçada mosaic paving, no tangle of overhead cables, and immaculately kept parks. There’s a visible standard, enforced everywhere.
In Bulgaria, public infrastructure doesn’t just underdeliver – it’s often the first thing that visibly startles foreign visitors. Broken sidewalks. Peeling façades. Apartment blocks each renovated in a different, clashing color.
Few pedestrian zones outside city centers, almost no bike lanes, gridlocked traffic, and heavy overdevelopment along the Black Sea coast – a jarring contrast to Portugal’s tightly protected coastline.
Public transport outside the major cities – Sofia, Varna, and Burgas – is patchy at best. The overall effect reads as neglect, not charm.
The Hospitality Myth
Portugal has built a reputation as warm, tolerant, and easy to navigate – bolstered by surprisingly high English fluency, even among older generations, thanks to subtitled rather than dubbed film and TV. Visitors feel welcomed and safe from day one, and language stops being a barrier almost immediately.
Bulgaria’s hospitality tells a different story depending on where you look. English proficiency drops sharply outside the major cities, and the public mood can feel guarded toward outsiders.
Bulgarian warmth is real – but it mostly lives inside homes, among family and friends. In the public-facing economy – restaurants, government offices, everyday services – the customer-service standard that international travelers expect is frequently missing.
What Bulgaria Actually Needs
Bulgaria has the raw materials to run Portugal’s playbook: striking mountains, mineral springs among the richest in Europe, a coastline, strong food culture, and one of the lowest costs of living around. What it’s missing isn’t scenery – it’s a strategy.
That means:
- Ditching the “cheap destination for drinking” pitch in favor of wellness, spa tourism, remote work, and authentic culture
- Real investment in the basics – sidewalks, parks, bike lanes, clean public space, consistently maintained green areas
- A digitized, English-friendly state – easy company registration, easy residence permits, government services that don’t require a local fixer
Right now, being a foreigner trying to build a life in Bulgaria still mostly means figuring it out alone. Portugal built entire support systems to do the opposite. Bulgaria hasn’t lost this race. It just hasn’t figured out yet that it’s playing the wrong one.
