Forecasting of the Needs of the Infrastructure Policy in Tourism in Bulgaria

The infrastructure policy in tourism in Bulgaria is put under serious pressure by the abundance of new strategic documents which the country was obliged to adopt in connection with its membership in the European Union. The problem of forecasting in the strategic documents is crucial to the formation of proper innovation infrastructure policy for the future development of the tourism in the country. This paper is aimed at presenting the lack of real forecasting in many of the strategic documents adopted for the development of the infrastructure policy in Bulgaria (i.e. the National Strategy for Integrated Development of Infrastructure of the Republic of Bulgaria 2006-2015, the National Strategy for Regional Development of the Republic of Bulgaria for the period 2005-2015, the Strategy of Development of the Transport System of the Republic of Bulgaria until 2020, the Strategy for development of the Transport Infrastructure of Bulgaria until 2015, the Strategy for Development of the Transport Infrastructure through the Mechanisms of the Concession, the National Strategy for Sustainable Tourism Development in Bulgaria covering the period 2009-2013, the National Program for Development of Agriculture 2014-2020, National Environmental Strategy 2009-2018, the Innovation Strategy for Intelligent Specialization 2014-2020, and the EU Strategy on the Danube region). The paper provides a practical example for the use of the Halt-Winters method of exponential smoothing on the number of tourism arrival at the Sofia International airport. The achieved forecast value can be further used for setting more clear and achievable goals in above mentioned types of strategic planning documents.