November 25-28 2015 will be the period during which representatives of the tourist branch and media from more than 90 companies and 17 countries will meet in Plovdiv. Today, on a press conference in the Municipality of Plovdiv, the mayor Ivan Totev, in the presence of the deputy-mayors Stephan Stoyanov and Georgi Marinov, announced the event to the media.
The international forum for tourism started in the autumn of 2012 and with every following edition the event has been proven to get more prestigious, highly professional and useful, giving better and better results. One of the main purposes of IMT is to present Plovdiv and the region as an attractive tourist destination for foreign visitors. An important aspect of the event is the presentation of the newest tourist sites, attractions and improvements on the infrastructure in Plovdiv, which are quite a few in number for the last year – the multifunctional sports hall “Kolodruma”, the neighborhood of artistic industries “Kapana”, the Singing Fountains, the Natural Science Museum with the first in the country 3D planetarium. Another priority for the participants – Bulgarian and foreign tour operators, media, representatives of local authorities and the tourist branch in the region, is the opportunity to create business contacts during the B2B meetings, which take an important place in the forum. 
The idea of the Plovdiv Municipality for creating a business forum, which is out of the traditional conception for Tourist market, is extremely successful. The results are already obvious. For the first time we have so many visitors from Asia. When IMT first started, the groups from China and Japan were 5 to 7. Since then the number of the tourist has been sustainably increasing and at this moment we have over 100 groups. There has been a significant interest from countries, which have never travelled this destination before. For the first time in this seventh edition of IMT, we are going to meet representatives from Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Slovakia, USA and Montenegro. The interest from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Morocco and the neighboring Turkey, Greece, Makedonia, Romania, Serbia is continuously increasing. Morocco, for example, is going to take part for the third time.” – explained the Mayor of Plovdiv Ivan Totev.
The online platform of IMT, where one can see further details and register for the meeting, is also working successfully. 
IMT is an example for the successful partnership of the Municipality of Plovdiv and the tourist branch, as well as the Bulgarian outgoing market representatives. This is one of the successful projects of the Municipality, leading to sustainable increase in the number of foreign visitors and rating a 10-percent increase of the incomes in comparison to the previous year. According to the National Statistics Institute, the total increase of the night-stays in the city is 8%.
The official opening of IMT will be on November, 26 at 09:15 a.m. in the Hall “Prof. Arch. Jolov” in Ramada Plovdiv Trimontium hotel. After the welcoming by the Ministry of Tourism, the program will continue with a presentation of Plovdiv and the region as a tourist destination, and the introduction the prestigious Concours Mondial De Bruxelles 2016, which is going to take place in Plovdiv next year. 
The program will include a visit of the seventh edition of one of the most massive events in the branch of wine tourism – the Young Wine Parade, which is going to be opened on the 27-th of November 2015 at 2:00 p.m. at the Lapidarium Square in the Old Town.