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July 21, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 9
Hot summer ahead for Southeast Europe
bne IntelliNews
Tourist arrivals were up across the board in Southeast Europe in May, with the data hinting at a very strong summer season this year.
This follows a similarly strong performance in 2016, as countries from the region are increas- ingly effective in wooing tourists, while holiday- makers look for cheap, safe alternatives to other East Mediterranean destinations like Egypt and Turkey, which have been hit by terror attacks in recent years.
Another factor helping to boost Southeast Eu- rope tourism is the growing number of flights operated by low cost airlines. WizzAir, for exam- ple, recently added to its Bucharest-based fleet, opened a base in Chisinau and launched routes from Budapest to both Tirana and Skopje — the latter as part of a major expansion in Macedo- nia planned this year.
Across the region, the sharpest increase in tour- ist arrivals in May was in Montenegro, which saw numbers increase by 14.1% (foreign tourists were up by 13.9%).
Montenegro is expecting tourism revenues to exceed €1.5bn a year by 2026. The sector is also expected to attract significant investments, which should support economic growth in the near term. One of the biggest ongoing projects is the development of the Lustica Bay resort on the Adriatic coast, which will see investment of €1.1bn over the next 25 years.
Both Montenegro and Croatia could, however, see their tourism sectors hit by forest fires fol- lowing a drought and extremely hot tempera- tures in both countries. As of July 18, firefighters were battling fires in the outskirts of Croatia's second city Split, while fires were also raging in the Lustica peninsular in Montenegro.
Meanwhile, the number of tourists visiting Mac- edonia also soared, by 11.7% y/y in May after jump- ing by 18.4% y/y a month earlier, data from the sta- tistics office indicated on July 12. Serbia was not far behind, with tourist numbers increasing by 11.5%, while numbers increased by 10.6% in Romania. Other countries in the region saw a more modest, but still positive, growth in tourist numbers.