The panel on the development of airport infrastructure included the executive director of Montenegro Airports, Danilo Orlandic, the director of Pula airport, Svemir Radmilo, Roko Tolic from Dubrovnik Airport and Zeljka Radak Kukavicic, the director of the National Tourist Organization of Montenegro.
Radak Kukavicic pointed out that Montenegro is recognized as an airplane destination and that the development of this sort of traffic is imperative.
"About 50 percent of the guests come by plane to Montenegro, which is roughly the average on the world’s level. In recent years, all indicators are increasing, and of course, the arrival of low-cost airlines has contributed to this. Our desire and what we all work hard to do is to make Montenegro even more open, especially to the Western European market, " she said.
One of the main topics of the panel was the advantages and disadvantages of granting the airport under concession. "We in Montenegro have different views regarding the future development of our airports, and the final decision is yet to be made. I need to emphasize that we have a company that achieves better results year after year and that we can all be proud of. Only last year, we saw the traffic of nearly 2.2 million passengers, which means that the country of Montenegro times 3.5 went through our airports. We are aware that we have to expand our capacities, but we also must be careful and look at all aspects," Orlandic said.
The director of Pula Airport says that he is not against the concession. "For me, there is only one question - are you successful in managing it? If one business mode brings revenue both to you and the local community, why change? I do not know why the concessionaire would do it better? You should be very careful and involve the local community because they are the ones who get influenced the most -both by benefits and by harms," Radmilo makes it clear.
The director of trade at Dubrovnik Airport says that one thing has to be clear. "Regardless of the efforts from all our states to rebuild and build road infrastructure, we in aviation have the habit of saying that 2 kilometers of the road will not take you anywhere, but if you have 2 km of a runway, you can go wherever you want. Of course, the concessionaire is coming to earn money, but that is why each state must be smart and needs to gather capable and smart people who will measure everything and make smart decisions. We at Dubrovnik Airport succeeded in trying to prove that we could run and raise the company by ourselves to the level where it is now. Of course, we have spent some of the assets from the European Union funds, but we also had to have skilled staff who managed to meet all the strict EU conditions," said Tolic.
Participants in the panel concluded that this part of Europe is fascinating to foreign tourists and that the high growth of air transport at almost all airports shows this clearly. Therefore, they agree that this opportunity should be used, but above all, we need to continue with investing in infrastructure development, so that each traveler will decide to come again. The moderator of the panel was Alen Scuric, one of the most prominent aviation analysts in this region.
Text by M.D., on May 8th, 2018, read more at CdM
