An interview with Nina Chamova, CEO of Suntours, the owner of Wave Resort, Pomorie
What are your expectations for the 2024 summer season?
We are positive about summer season 2024. Th first bookings show us a steadily growing trend up. Every year we put tremendous effort and a lot of creativity to enhance our product and offer something extraordinary to our guests as we already have many repeating guests. In Wave Resort, we are constantly adding new elements to the product and are improving our services. We would prepare little positive surprises to our clients and strive to exceed their expectations from the moment they set their feet on Bulgarian soil.
What are the advantages of Bulgaria as a summer vacation destination?
In brief – Mild climate, sandy beaches, excellent cuisine, a lot of historical sights, relatively short flights to reach the destination, plus an excellent price-to-quality ratio…
Well, it’s much easier to define the disadvantages and obstacles – short season, unpleasant weather conditions especially at the beginning of the summer season, shortage of personnel, inflation, hence the threat of compromising the quality of product, destination competitors with their dedicated marketing budgets and price offers ….
In fact, Bulgaria is one of the traditional long-time destinations for Europeans. We used to have the reputation of a widely affordable destination. Now we strive to escape from this unfavorable definition and I would say that Bulgaria’s main advantage is that it is a destination with an excellent value-for-money assessment. The product has improved in the last 5-6 years, and now we offer a much richer variety of services and try to combine the typical recreational summer product with alternatives like SPA packages, events, cultural, historical and culinary tours, much better positioned and specialized products in order to extend the length of the season.
Your company owns and manages the Wave Resort, which, according to the ratings of its guests, is one of the 10 best hotels in Bulgaria. What qualities should a hotel possess today in order to achieve such success?
A lot of factors have their own impact on the meaning of this short definition but one of the biggest challenges nowadays is to keep the level of the services steadily up and constantly improving. The services are ultimately delivered by the staff and we all know that securing and motivating the people to work in the travel industry has now become a major challenge for everyone in the post-COVID years. We invest in our people, in their professional development and personal well-being.
What is the Wave Resort guest profile – such as geographic (country of origin) and demographics (age, marital status, etc.)?
One of our main principles in Wave resort is to maintain a good healthy mix of clients in the resort. In other words, we try not to have any predominant nationality in the hotel and to respect every culture and nation. In 2023 above 20% of our customers were Bulgarian, the same percentage – Romanian, British and German and Polish clients were on the third place with 12-13% each and the rest came from Israel, Czech republic, France, Belgium, Slovakia and another European countries.
As far as the guest profile is concerned – in accordance with our concept, the majority of our customers are families with children. Families are warmly welcome in our resort. Our concept is dedicated to the fun and the unique experiences of the families. Apart from that, when analyzing the profile of our customers in the last years, we did notice, that we frequently have couples coming for short stays (4-5 days) and for that purpose we have a dedicated “adults only” pool in our aqua zone. We have specially designed signature rooms, designed for young couples seeking privacy and relaxing atmosphere.
One of the most common trends in tourism recently is the growing importance of the so-called tourist experience. What “experiences” can Wave Resort guests expect?
Yet when thinking about the idea to build this resort and establishing our concept, our primary ambition was to make this project a unique one. To offer to our future guests a place of endless possibilities… when discussing and designing the project we wanted to create a world of unforgettable experience in all aspects.
Our guests can enjoy a wide range of unique experiences in the resort:
- With our seven pools of different kinds, we offer the guests a variety of fun facilities for every need – from relaxation by the adults only pool, served by a separate bar, to many water challenges and games for the active people of all ages and families in the Aqua Tower, Aqua Spray Park and all of the other pools.
- We also offer a sumptuous all-inclusive buffet and food by the pools but our guests can also experience a lavish cuisine in our Bulgarian, Mediterranean and Asian a-la-carte restaurants where they can dine in style and in a cozy thematic atmosphere.
- Our award-wining W-SPA offers experiences unique for the region. As you probably know, the resort is located just next to Pomorie salt pans – famous with its mud and its benefits for the health. In our SPA we use the mud to rejuvenate your mind and body.
- Our entertainment team is also highly motivated to make the guests happy and to ensure millions of unforgettable memories from their stay. These young people take care of the entertainment for all ages during the day and in the evenings. We offer our guests to enjoy a variety of evening shows. In addition this year we plan to extend the evening entertainment by organizing music nights and parties by the beach bar for the people seeking a different kind of entertainment.
- Walking on our graphite-colored beach, and hiking to Pomorie on the path between the lake pans and the sea, enjoying the picturesque view of the Lake is also a unique experience for our customers.
Book your stay at Wave Resort here.
