Citizens of Ukraine and Russia, who currently live in Montenegro, cannot be treated as tourists, so official data on the income generated during the season, as well as the number of tourists, should be taken with a grain of salt, said the director of the Center for Research and Development of Tourism, Petar Golubović.
– The number of tourist arrivals in the period May, April, March, the percentage was significantly higher compared to last year but also compared to 2019. These data gave us the right to believe that the peak of the summer tourist season will continue in the same direction and that the number of arrivals will be at a level that will set such results that will be a benchmark in the future, such as today’s record year 2019 – said Golubović.
– That data should be taken with a grain of salt because we had a significant number of arrivals of people who we cannot treat as tourists, and in the official Monstat statistics they are treated as tourists. These are people who live among us, they are primarily people from Russia, Ukraine who moved to our place. Some information that the president came out with is that it is a number of 60,000 people, which is about 10% of the population of Montenegro, and that is a large number of people who influence the economy, but we cannot treat them as tourists – Golubović pointed out.
The Minister of Economic Development and Tourism, Goran Đurović, announced in the past few days that we have never had better income from tourism in 6 months, and that in that period EUR 453 million of income from tourism was achieved. Đurović also said that 878.02 thousand tourists were registered in all types of accommodation in Montenegro during the first six months, or 40.53% more compared to the same period last year.
He concluded that the postseason cannot make up for a lost season.
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