Skål Sofia News

Partnership with Choice Hotels

August 21st, 2020|0 Comments

Dear Skålleagues, We are pleased to announce the signing of an agreement between Skål International and Choice Hotels, as a great new benefit for all Skålleagues! The deal, which has just been approved by the Skål [...]

July 21st, 2020|0 Comments

Dear Skålleague, It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Skål International Europe Area Committee has been formed as an official structure of the organisation as of 14 July 2020. All Skål International countries and Affiliated [...]

Webinar UNWTO Covid-19 Response

May 11th, 2020|0 Comments

Dear Skål Sofia members, Skål International is launching its Webinar program with the participation of experts and senior leaders from the Travel and Tourism industry. The first event is scheduled for Tuesday 12 May, welcoming [...]

Skal Apero at Hotel Budapest on Tuesday 29. October 6.30h pm.

Dear Skalleagues,

Although a very small turn out, we had great discussions at this months meeting.

-Skalleague Andrey Lilov was presented by his colleague Inna Petrova, Business Development of the Urbo App.
-Intensive “digital discussion” with Elly Stoilova, who is very busy and successful with her Chatbot which already has proven better guest services and direct bookings to both, tour operators and hotels. She has a new comfortable business model for hotels
-We decided to add sponsors to our website and invite further sponsors
We thank Alexandra Dimitrova, General Manager of Hotel Budapest, for her splendid hospitality and the work to prepare the apero, and we are sorry that many of the confirmed attendants couldn’t make it at the end.
– we shall try, in future, to use the Urbo App’s event management function for the closed address circle of SI Sofia to communicate upcoming events.

Introducing our Newest Member

We are proud to introduce our new member Elitza Stoilova

Elitza Stoilova is the Founder and CEO of creative chatbot agency Umni.co, automating the communication of the business with customers and other tasks in Facebook Messenger and on the business web site using chatbot technology. Umni assists customers from various industries – tourism, healthcare, public organisations, entertainment and other.

Elly is ex-hotelier with over 20 years of experience abroad in hospitality in Sales and Marketing, Operations as well as on the position of a General Manager of a hotel and a tour operator on the island of Saipan (Mariana Islands, Pacific Ocean), honoured with 2 Government awards by the Marianas Visitors Authority for being instrumental for developing Mariana islands destination throughout the years (2003-2016). She is a member of American Hotels & Lodging Association, Rotary Club, BBBA, BESCO and other professional and business organisations.

Link to website

We would like to bring your attention to the latest Skål Magazine please go to page 12-15, you will see an article from Skål Sofia.
Congratulations to all who participated.

Our Skalleague and Vice President of SI Sofia, Yanko Krastev, began attracting tourism and hospitality professionals from the coastal destinations to join a table at the castle, where an office infrastructure is available.

Since it takes time to achieve at least 20 active memberships and receiving approval from the international executive committee, this group of professionals will be under the umbrella of SI Sofia at the beginning. The event is an invitation to all Skalleagues! European clubs will be notified and invited. Former world president Susanna Saari from Finland fully supports the event!

Susanna visited the castle last month and was very impressed and as always encourages new members to the Skal Family

The Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of Bulgaria, in cooperation with London based ITIC , gathered international tourism professionals and Ministers of Tourism, amongst them Ministers from Egypt, Algeria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Albania, for the “Investing in Tourism Sustainability” conference in Sunny Beach on May 30-31. Participants were hosted at the Helena Resort and the Riu Helios Hotel.

Past Skål International World President (2017/18) Susanna Saari made the long jump from Turku (Finland) since she participated as an invited panellist and moderator.

Susanna enjoyed meeting Skålleagues in Sofia on 29th May, at the Intercontinental Hotel Sofia. Thank you, Angelo, for the perfect service and attention. Susanna was accommodated in Hotel Budapest, invited by General Manager and fellow Skålleague Alexandra Dimitrova.

The following morning, a small Skål delegation including Andrea, Stanley, and Henning took off for a short road trip with Susanna, including a detour to Ravadinovo castle. We met George and Yanko who welcomed us with great hospitality at the castle.

The BBC scheduled Susanna for an interview the same afternoon to learn about her views on sustainable tourism.

During the gala dinner which followed the conference, Susanna proudly handed her President’s flag to Min. Nikolina Angelkova, in the presence of Skål members from 7 different clubs.  

Impossible Markets #5: Globalized Bulgaria – a business forum for sharing experiences in working with different cultures – will be held on the 7th of June, 2019, in Sofia. The mission of this event is to promote cultural diversity, as well as to provide an opportunity for knowledge, experience and ideas sharing between people coming from different countries, different professions and industries.

Impossible Markets is all about learning and networking in a multicultural environment. This fifth edition focuses on the changes in and about Bulgaria in the globalized world. We have invited distinguished speakers – some of them foreigners with many years of professional experience in Bulgaria, others – Bulgarians who have built their careers abroad. The day will consists of presentations, panel discussions and one 90 minutes 

workshop on Empathy – the Key Ingredient for Building Trust in a Multicultural Environment. We will enjoy also a networking cocktail with some nice music and wine in the evening after the official part. All the details about the event are available on our website.

We cordially invite members of Skal International to join our event with special 15% discount to our prices. Online registration is available here: https://impossiblemarkets.com/register and you can also contact Ms. Jasmina Tal via email office@impossiblemarkets.com for any additional information.

EMITT Trade Show February 2019

Sofia Skalleague Stanley Stankov had a business trip to Istanbul to attend the EMITT trade show beginning of February.

He was wonderfully received by the Turkish Skalleagues of various clubs and especially by President of SI Istanbul, Ata Eremsoy, with whom Stanley exchanged flags. In following communications, a visit of SI Istanbul to SI Sofia in Spring has been mutually agreed.

Skal Meeting 30/01/2018

Dear Skalleagues 

Another successful Skal meeting!

What a way to start 2018 and the first Skal meeting of the year.

A huge thank you to the team from the Hotel Central Park who hosted the event. A special thank you to Chef Ivan Gyuviyski, who presented his new menu and feed us all with extremely good food accompanied with wine from Domain Bessa Valley, French Domain Paul Mas and Riesling from Varna region based Sallas Estate which complimented each other perfectly. Thanks goes out to James who presented Rustic Reserve liqueurs and for providing the pre dinner cocktail, Trunki Fizz. The evening truly set the standard for high quality meetings throughout the year with networking, round table discussions and general catch up with friends and colleagues. For those who attended the event thank you for your participation and for those who didn’t, you missed out on a great night.
We are already working on the next event meeting in February and will update you all soon.
Skal!

31th October 2017

Skal Monthly meeting.

Thanks to all who came to the monthly meeting, various topics were raised and debated, including an introduction from Jordan and his colleague from the StepforBugaria foundation (for more information click this link)

A very interesting round table discussion about employment in the hospitality trade, how it is becoming increasingly difficult and how to try to resolve it by introducing young people into the trade.

We were introduced to the new website and would like to thank James and his team at Opportunity Bulgaria for all their hard work. We have some final tweaks before we make the website live and start to ask all members for input.

Finally a special thanks to Mr Christoph Glaser (GM Hilton Sofia) and his dedicated team for hosting the event and inviting all attendees to dinner and drinks during the meeting.

It is vitally important that all members try to attend these meetings as the more heads around the table the more interesting it gets.

Looking forward to seeing you all at the next meeting.

Skål International News

World Tourism and Bulgarian News

Interesting Facts about Bulgaria

The country that brought yoghurt to the world

In Bulgaria, yoghurt is everywhere. You’ll find it dolloped on falafel wraps, slathered on moussaka and lined up in supermarket refrigerators. It is the basis of traditional Bulgarian dishes such as tarator, a cold soup made of yoghurt, water, cucumber, walnuts and herbs; and snezhanka, a salad consisting of yoghurt, cucumbers, garlic and dill.