National Tourism Organization continues with the campaign and effort to attract more guests: The campaign “Take a deep breath” will be pursued via leading broadcasters and media in the region and the contracts will be signed with 18 TV stations while promotional video is customized to the neighboring markets.
Released article on controversial poll regarding guests from Serbia – amended.
Podgorica – Managing Director of the National Tourism Organization (NTO), Sasa Radovic, said yesterday that Montenegrin caterers and hoteliers didn’t cut prices enough and that there is still more room for prices to be corrected in certain segments.
At the press conference, he pointed out that the upcoming tourism season will develop in specific circumstances due to economic crisis and occurrence of new illnesses in the world. He added that tourism is important for overall development of Montenegro and that it is a component that makes between 20 and 22 percent of gross domestic product. (GDP)
According to Radovic, communication with markets in the region is primary orientation of NTO, which the World Tourism Organization also recommended.
– There is a struggle literally for every single tourist and our competition is active in this field a lot. Even some destinations which haven’t relied much on the neighboring markets during the period before the crisis now intensified their promotional activities exactly on these markets. In earlier years, Montenegro depended 70% on the market in the region and last year this figure reduced to 50% and downright guests from the region make the foundation of our tourism this year – said Radovic for Daily “Vijesti” adding that guests from Serbia make 40% of overall tourists in Montenegro and that according to official data, 400.000 people from this country visited Montenegro in 2008.
– If we count in also 25.000 weekend apartments in Montenegro owned by citizens of Serbia and their relatives who stayed in the apartments we can estimate that nearly one million citizens of Serbia visited Montenegro – remarked Radovic.
NTO began officially with the second part of promotional activities yesterday and the activities include presenting Montenegrin tourism resources to the countries in the region. The opening of tourism branch office in Sarajevo is scheduled for today.
Radovic stated that the promotion in eight cities in Serbia was successfully brought to an end and added that second part of the campaign implies presenting Montenegrin tourism in eight major cities in the region.
– Second tourism branch office will be opened in Sarajevo, and the presentations in Tuzla and Banja Luka will be held on Thursday and Friday. According to the plan, the promotional campaign will continue on Kosovo at the Tourism Fair which will take place in Pristina on Thursday and Friday. We will hold presentations there in cooperation with the municipality of Ulcinj. Montenegrin tourism offer will be presented in Skopje and from 21st till 24th May it will be presented in Slovenia – in Maribor and Ljubljana. Second part of the campaign will come to an end with presentations in Tirana and Budapest but the exact dates for these two visits aren’t specified yet. – said Radovic adding that the market of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most significant markets to Montenegro, right after Serbian and Russian markets.
The campaign “Take a deep breath” (Udahni duboko) will be pursued via leading broadcasters and media in the region and the contracts will be signed with 18 TV stations while promotional video is customized to these markets.
– We consider this campaign to be the most effective and thanks to it we raise hopes to be able to recover from ‘negative indices’ registered already by all tourist destinations. Poor bookings are evident everywhere but I believe that we have done everything to attract potential guests – Radovic said.

Controversial poll on guests from Serbia

Radovic said that the National Tourism Organization of Serbia has officially confirmed that it didn’t conduct the poll on where Serbian citizens intend to spend their summer vacation. According to results of the alleged poll published few days ago, merely 3% of 20.000 polled respondents from Serbia chose Montenegro as their tourist destination for this summer.
Namely, in the corrected version published yesterday by the news agency Mina Business it is said that, in fact, the National Association of Tourist Agencies conducted the controversial poll.
Regarding the results of the poll, Radovic stated that they do not pay much attention on public opinion surveys at the moment but rather work hard on promotional activities in this phase of the campaign.

By M.C.
© Daily Press – Vijesti. All rights reserved.

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