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Coastal Tourism in Montenegro – Economic Dynamics, Spatial Developments and Future Perspectives

2011; Croatian Dairy Union; Volume: 73; Issue: 01 Linguagem: Inglês

10.21861/hgg.2011.73.01.11

1848-6401

Matthias Bickert, Daniel Göler, Holger Lehmeier,

Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research

Montenegro seeks its future perspectives in tourism.And there are good reasons for that: The country was considered to be the fastest growing tourism market worldwide in 2007.Notwithstanding a slight decrease during the last years, tourism is still seen as a crucial factor for future economic development.This seems to be a viable option if we consider Montenegro's natural potential, its beneficial position on the Adriatic coastline and the experience in tourism gained in the many years since the 1970s.These dynamic developments were motivation enough to explore tourism in Montenegro in a research project with strong empirical evidence, organised as co-operation between Universities from Germany, Albania, Montenegro and Serbia.Our empirical approach included semi-structured, flexible interviews with different types of stakeholders.Since tourism in Montenegro is still almost entirely limited to the coast, we chose three coastal hot-spots in tourism, namely Kotor, Budva and Ulcinj.Our results show that the current development in tourism can surely be considered as progressive and dynamic.But it is also strongly affected by multiple polarisations and divergent trends.There is a need for infrastructural upgrades in the mass tourism sector, which is for the most part a low budget market with very difficult future perspectives.At the same time, there is a small but growing number of very exclusive offers, often seen as the vanguard of Montenegro's future as an upper class tourists' destination.All in all, the economic bias towards coastal tourism involves the risk of an increase in the already strong spatial disparities, leaving behind a mountainous hinterland with a shrinking economy and population.