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Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live
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Sophie Foster & Bradley Jolly

British tourists claim new holiday hotspot with sun, £9 hotels and 80p pints

British tourists have claimed a new holiday hotspot, after Spain and Amsterdam were among the locations to clamp down on bad behaviour.

Drunken holidaymakers have been flocking to Sunny Beach in Bulgaria where pints had be enjoyed for £1 and hotels costs less than £30 a night.

Dubbed "Blackpool abroad" for its party atmosphere, the area has built up its reputation for cheap booze and raucous bars and clubs.

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It is becoming a popular holiday destination for young Brits, who traditionally have visited places like Magaluf, Benidorm and Amsterdam for such thrills.

A new E4 series Emergency On Sunny Beach explores the behaviour of Brits in the Bulgaria resort on the Black Sea coast, reports Daily Star.

It highlights the issue of "nuisance tourism" which upset authorities so much in the likes of Spain and Netherlands, they implemented strict crackdowns in recent years.

In the new programme, police in Sunny Beach say Brits cause the most trouble in the resort. The series shows a lad strip totally naked and pass out during a drinking game, and couples snog and grope each other on the dancefloor.

A pensioner is so drunk he can’t find his hotel in another scene.

One tourist, 21-year-old Mason, from Essex, heads on a bar crawl. He tells the documentary: "I’m 21, a young buck, I’ve got a lot of goals. I’m going to make Sunny Beach my oyster."

Around 100,000 of Brits head to Sunny beach each year generally because of the rock bottom prices.

Its tourism industry developed as a cheap alternative to western Europe for families but the documentary suggests that appeal has long changed.

Tourists are drawn by 80p pints, bars that sell Viagra jellies, and all-you-can-drink nights for just 30 euros (£26) — about the same cost as a hotel room.

Laughing gas balloons – made from nitrous oxide and classed as a psychoactive substance in the UK – is sold on the streets in Sunny Beach.

These activities have, on the other hand, been outlawed at other destinations, once popular with young Brits. Amsterdam has, for instance, put new rules in place around drugs and sex workers to discourage bad behaviour.

And Lanzarote recently stated that it was looking to attract more "high quality" German tourists rather than the British.

Sunny Beach has, authorities stress, pulled in an 40 extra policemen each summer from the surrounding areas and there are 130 lifeguards there.

Local police woman Desislava Goranova said: "At night the central part of the resort goes through a change, the clubs open, it’s full of people with loose morals, a lot of drugs and booze.

"In my view the usual British tourist looks like this — fair skin, a bit chubby and wearing as little clothing as possible, always very loud and covered in tattoos.

"Compared to other nationalities the British tourists are always very loud and jolly."

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