Cultural and wine tourism – opportunity for development of sustainable tourism in the Shumen Region

The paper examines the basic principles of sustainable tourism. An attempt is made to draw an analogy with the application of those principles in the Shumen region, through an analysis of cultural and cognitive tourism, and of the opportunities for the development of wine tourism. The cumulative effect of including a number of alternative forms of tourism into the general tourist mix increases the economic effect, the valorization, and respectively – increases sustainability in its various aspects. Although the region in discussion is saturated with cultural sites and represents a center of cultural tourism, that fact is not an obstacle to the development of wine tourism as well – given the socio-cultural, soil-climatic and the regional economic and demographic characteristics. It is such types of interrelations, which are in the focus of this study.