There is something effortlessly glamorous about speeding across an azure sea in a vintage motorboat, particularly when the sea is flanked by mountains and terracotta-roofed villages huddle by the shore. The ride from the gleaming marina of Porto Montenegro into the legendary Bay of Kotor is spectacular; as we travel through the mouth of the bay, the stone houses of Perast shimmer in the distance, dwarfed by giant peaks. It’s the Mediterranean by way of Norway, best seen from the water — in a speedboat, preferably, rather than the crammed tourist boats we pass.

This type of experience — glamorous, elegant, moneyed — is exactly what the Montenegrin government is aiming to create for the breed of tourists it wants to welcome. A new tourism