The New Year is practically “around the corner”, so many are focused on New Year’s arrangements, while others, such as the Carine company that manages three large hotels, will “close the doors” on December 4.
Although they believe that visits in the post-season period are still not up to par compared to 2019, hoteliers are satisfied with capacity occupancy. The New Year is practically “around the corner”, so many are focused on New Year’s arrangements, while others, like the company Carina, which manages three large hotels, will “close its doors” on December 4. New Year’s arrangements have been sold out at the Lighthouse Hotel, and director Jovan Mićunović says that the hotel’s guests at the moment are mostly athletes.
– These are sports teams that come to tournaments or preparations. It is quite better than before, but in this period the visits are not at the level of 2018 and 2019. Although numerous parameters indicate the possibility of recovery of the tourism industry, it may not be as fast as we hoped when it comes to winter. The season is 30 percent worse than in 2019, but it was significantly better than in 2020 and 2021 – said Mićunović, adding that November is the month of planning the winter period, arrangements for New Year’s holidays, but also the upcoming tourist pre-season and summer season.
They are sold out for the New Year, and they have excellent announcements of the arrival of guests in January, February for the Mimosa Festival and the beginning of March. These are mostly guests from the surrounding area, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and certain sports teams from abroad have also confirmed their reservations. At the Hotel Olimpija in Kumbor, on the other hand, they say that the season was excellent, which cannot be said for the post-season period. We have prepared the agency’s price list for 2023, as well as New Year’s arrangements. For the next year, they also have reservations through booking, and there is a special interest for July.
They received the most inquiries for the summer season from the agency from Albania, which cooperates with guests from Switzerland, Italy and North Macedonia who cooperate with agencies from the Netherlands. Hotels Park and Delfin, which operate within the Carine company, will work until December 4, when they will close, and will receive guests again in February. Hotel Kumbor was closed on November 1. The owner of Carine Čedomir Popović rated the season and post-season as better than in 2019, and capacity occupancy was twice as high as last year.
Without good infrastructure, there is no tourism
According to Popović, although tourism is a strategic branch of the Montenegrin economy, it is the least invested in it.
– First of all, little has been invested in infrastructure. Tourism and agriculture should be strategic economic branches in the development of Montenegro. We see that there is a shortage of food on the world market, and in our country there are so many uncultivated areas, neglected villages, mountains… How much it would have meant if it had been done in time, if it had been designed, as it used to be. People could engage in agriculture and go to work, to have an additional occupation. Then we had both food surplus and production surplus. Today it has reached its lowest level – believes Popović, stressing that it is a privilege to have two airports nearby, but there must also be an organized traffic infrastructure.
A non-functioning collector and wild landfills drive away tourists
The problem with the collector along the Riviera has not yet been solved, and guests are noticing that. We want tourism, but we don’t dedicate ourselves to it properly. It is also incomprehensible to me that someone allowed yachts to be overhauled again in the shipyard in Bijela, where nice resorts and hotels were supposed to spring up, Popović said, stressing the problem of the disposal of construction materials at the Carina site in Baošić, which should to build a hotel. He said that they have started cleaning the site and will fence off the lot so that no more waste is dumped, local media writes.
