19 August 2018 - It is mid-August and Budva, the Montenegrin tourist paradise, is facing tourist overcrowding. Beaches are filled with thousands of tourists, restaurants are all booked and traffic jams are more than just annoying. New tourists are coming every day, old ones are leaving and for a small city counting 30,000 residents, that’s a huge figure, writes Tomislav Kukec, a journalist at 100posto.hr
While traveling to Budva, the author of the article said watching the crack of dawn was an unforgettable experience. This was the moment when Montenegro reminded him of Monaco.
“There were so many super-luxury cars on roads and according to their registration marks, most of them came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, but also Croatia, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and especially Russia. Almost every price list in restaurants is printed in Cyrillic (Russian) characters, as Russians simply adore Montenegrin coastline,” emphasized the journalist.
He also noted Budva was a huge construction site. “You should know soon there will be a super-luxury residential building ‘Porto Budva’, which is going to include 300 high-end apartments, 280 of which has already been sold, and one is already in a possession of Croatian handball player, Igor Karačić. Many mega yachts are at anchor in front of the old town of Budva so that the bigwig boaters can simply step out of them and party all night long,” the article said.
According to the author’s impressions, one cannot face a bad financial situation if they decide to engage in tourism in Budva. Porto Budva and several smaller buildings are the last projects in town, as there’s no more free land in the city. But construction now expanded to suburbs where new apartments, family hotels, hostels, high-end accommodation facilities are being built.
“Most tourists in Budva are young people. During the day you can find beautiful and scarcely dressed women and beaches crowded with young people basking in the sun, playing volleyball and drinking cocktails, but the real life starts when the sun goes down. There are clubs on almost every corner of the city, many having DJs but live performances as well. I wouldn’t agree with the statement that clubs in Budva play just turbofolk. On the contrary, I heard Croatian music and Europe and world’s top songs as well. And there’s one club totally different from all the others- Top Hill, one of the greatest open clubs in the Balkans,” added the article.
And it seemed that Budva drew a clutch of many world-famous celebrities to its coast, including British catwalk legend Naomi Campbell, top model Adriana Lima, David Beckham and his wife Victoria. They all stayed in the resort of St. Stefan, a 5-star resort hotel, which has long been a popular destination for the world’s super-rich.
Tomislav Kukec in the end said it was hard to have a realistic opinion on Budva’s tourism. “Budva definitely has many ridiculous construction fails as anyone can build whatever they want, but on the other side, it’s a rapidly growing tourist destination, quite popular among young visitors. We must admit Croatia’s coastline doesn’t have one single place attracting celebs of its own. Our Montenegrin hosts were also surprised by this fact."
