Happy Birthday, Free Sofia Tour!

Already one year the numerous guests of Bulgaria’s capital enjoy the free walking tours around Sofia, guided by our non-profit organization. One year later, we would like to share with you what we’ve accomplished so far and how it all started. If we look back today, here are the key achievements of this year:

• 5000 guests from 87 countries and 6 continents. Most come from Europe and North America. Top 5 foreign countries visiting our tour are USA, UK, Germany, Spain, and Australia. However, we’ve had visitors from a lot of countries Bulgarian consider ‘exotic’, like Paraguay, Iceland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Rwanda. 5000 people who fell in love with Sofia and Bulgaria because of us;

This is your birthday cake for us

Around 450 tour groups.

• We had babies and grandparents, kids and teenagers, students and workers, backpackers and businessmen.
• 42 reviews on TripAdvisor and not a single negative one! TripAdvisor granted us their 2011 Certificate of Excellence, because of the consistently excellent ratings of our guests. Only positive testimonials all over the world;
• 2350 fans on Facebook, growing by ca. 10 per day;
• More than 80 friends and partners – public institutions, media, businesses and NGOs in Bulgaria and abroad. Thanks to our partners, we were able to present Free Sofia Tour at several occasions and spread the word, not only about the tour as such, but also about the voluntary project, which stands behind it;
• Flyers in more than 50 locations across Sofia, including hostels, hotels, embassies, foreign institutes, companies, restaurants and others;
• Wide media coverage in Bulgaria – TV or radio, online or printed, free of charge or expensive – everybody want us! There have been TV appearances when our tour was the only positive piece of news. Even professional magazines have asked us for tourist statistics. Even foreign media like the Daily Telegraph reported on us;
• A new professional design by Ralev.com, including logo, flyer, web-design and even branding a bike;
• A webpage with nearly 200 blog posts in 7 different categories: “FST in the media”, “Local news & events”, “News from FST”, “Others about us”, “Outside view”, “Stories from the tour”, and “Tips and tricks”;
• Last but not least, something harder to measure – we created conditions for multicultural exchange, became a role model for other projects and spurred action by the public and private sector in favour of society in the fields of tourism, culture and education;

And how it all started? Baby steps.

• First volunteer – Kristian Mitov
• First flyer – improvised in a couple of hours by Adrian Mitov (see on the right)
• First guest – a Canadian guy, who walked around 2,5 hours with Kristian and Vanya
• First review – “A fantastic way to learn about Sofia’s history and culture.“
• First unofficial partner – CouchSurfing Sofia
• First official partner – Tourist Service Municipal Company at Sofia Municipality
• First media appearance – Kristian on Bulgarian National Television (in Bulgarian)
• First presentation – Elevator Pitch @ StartUP Conference 2011
• First (constituent) meeting as an NGO – 22.10.2010

The first month we had only 38 guests.

Today we usually welcome at least 38 visitors per day. We started with one tour per day, today we have two – at 11:00 and at 18:00 – sometimes up to 140 guests and 6 groups per day.

Tours with 1 guest…

…and others with 100+.

Sun or rain, snow or cold – weather could never stop us or our guests:

We started with 4 volunteers

Тoday we are 11 people who represent a variety of professions – history, tourism, IR, journalism, engineering, marketing, film art, law, Arabic studies, political sciences, economics.

It’s a miracle that our GUEST NUMBER 5000 would come exactly today – there could have been no better present for our birthday. However, the greatest achievement of all is that a lot of times we have actually discovered Sofia through the eyes of our guests – the things YOU noticed, the questions YOU asked, the remarks YOU made, the surprises YOU mentioned. This is our biggest motivation and we’re looking forward to our guest number 10.000 🙂 Thank you all for your great support!

P.S. We will also write about the celebrations of our birthday and our guest N5000.