The country’s statistics agency, MONSTAT, on Tuesday said that in June, hotels, camp sites, resorts, boarding houses and motels welcomed around 144,000 arrivals – 11 per cent more than in June 2017.

The country is also luring more high-spending tourists after several five-star hotels opened this year.

Initial analysis of the summer season also shows that the structure of visitors is changing, with more Western visitors and fewer Russians coming to the country.

Montenegro has high hopes of a record summer season this year. Despite having a coastline that is only 300 kilometres long, it expects to earn around a billion euros from tourism in 2018 – up from less than 900 million euros in 2017.

The number of overnight stays was 5.3 per cent higher than in June 2017.

More than 91.3 per cent of these tourists were from the region, Western Europe and Scandinavia.

Visitors from Russia and Serbia still top the list, however, responsible for 17.7 and 13 per cent of the total number of foreign tourists.

The tourism organization in the popular resort of Budva on Tuesday said 60,000 tourists are currently registered in the town, which is 3 per cent more than in the same period last year.

Most tourists in Budva expectedly come from Russia and Serbia, but the local tourism organization reports an increase in the number of tourists from Turkey and neighbouring Croatia.

According to data presented by the Tourism Ministry on Monday, from the beginning of the year, nearly 170,000 tourists had visited Montenegro’s coast and mountain resorts.

Tourism Minister Pavle Radulovic said that government data showed a 22-per-cent rise in arrivals and earnings compared to last year.

“The structure of guests is also changing. All the growth we have actually is guests from the Western European market – while the number of traditional guests from the region and from Russia is somewhere on the same level,” Radulovic told Serbia’s Tanjug news agency on Monday.

About one-third of guests come from Western Europe but more were now coming from China and the Gulf countries, the minister said.

“We have recorded a serious rise, and tourists from these [countries] keep coming,” he added.

Radulovic also explained that the money inflow from tourism could be more than a billion euros this year, which he called a “spectacular result”.

“We have already exceeded 1987, which was a record year, and are slowly moving towards a new record,” he said.

The tourism sector now contributes more than 23 per cent to the country’s GDP and provides more than 30 per cent of jobs, while making a significant contribution toward reducing the country’s balance of payments deficit.

The government hopes that the tourism sector’s contribution to GDP could rise from 23 to 30 per cent by 2030.

Currently, the main obstacle to this is that Montenegro still remains a largely low-cost destination, dependent on visitors in search of the sun rather than a top-quality hotel experience.

Tourism authorities say that if the industry is to prosper long term, overall visitor numbers should decline, and comprise more higher-spending guests.

The Tourism Ministry says the country is on the right path towards this goal; this year, Montenegro will get 2,000 more four- and five-star accommodation units.

In 2017 alone, 33 new hotels opened, two of which were luxury five-star resorts in the town of Tivat, alongside 19 new four-star hotels.

The Ministry also said that ten new hotels opened by July 20 this year. August expects to see the opening of super-luxury Chedi Luštica Bay hotel in Tivat.

In May, the European Commission’s spring economic forecast set Montenegro’s likely economic growth in 2018 at 3 per cent, mostly driven by construction and tourism.

The National Tourism Organization attributed the rise in earnings and tourist number in 2018 to better hotel offers and more cultural and entertainment events, both on the coast and in the northern region.

However, some in the tourism business, NGOs and in opposition parties warn of negative environmental consequences from an uncontrolled tourism boom.

The opposition United Montenegro party on Monday predicted that this year’s tourist season would reveal all the failings in the country’s infrastructure – especially in terms of environmental protection and an overall “lack of standards”.

Read more:

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