21 November 2018 - The Tourist organization of the municipality of Budva, in cooperation with the National Tourism Organization, the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism of Montenegro, the tourism industry and strategic partners, has represented the tourism offer of Montenegro on the international exchange of tourism CITM 2018, which was held in Shanghai from November 16 to 18.
Traditionally, the Montenegrin and Serbian tourism offer was promoted under the joint brand "Wild Soul of Europe", which proved to be a good model, given the specificity of the East Asian region and the habits of Chinese tourists to visit as many of the countries that are geographically close during their travels.
Montenegro has noted significant growth in the past years in terms of arrivals and overnight stays from the Chinese market. During 2017, about 24 thousand Chinese tourists visited Montenegro, which is double the number of visits compared to the previous year. There were 34,000 overnight stays, which is also almost double the increase compared to the last year period.
The trend of growth continued this year, given that according to the official statistics of the National Tourism Organization of Montenegro, from the beginning of the year to the end of September this year there is an increase of about 65% in the number of tourists in Montenegrin hotels from China, as well as an increase in the number of overnight stays of around 51% compared to the same period last year.
Visa liberalization has also contributed to good results, and now citizens of the People's Republic of China, who come to Montenegro in an organized manner (via tour operators), can travel without a visa.
In line with the growing interest of tourists from this market, during the fair, Montenegrin representatives spoke with numerous tour operators and agents from China, among whom was one of the leaders in this market - "Ctrip". The meetings discussed the possibilities of attracting a large number of Chinese tourists, visa liberalization for individual travel, connections with tour operators from Montenegro, and other subjects that might interest tour operators and tourists from China. On the second day of the fair, the National Tourism Organization of Montenegro has participated in a B2B event for networking of exhibitors and customers.
CITM is one of the most important tourism markets in Asia, which gathers over 2300 exhibitors from different countries of the world. The fair has visited over 800 specialized international buyers from the field of tourism from more than 100 countries. In addition, the stock market is visited by a large number of media outlets every year. Also, this year's International Tourism Fair CITM has hosted numerous high representatives of countries from all over the world, managers of world-renowned companies, well-known economic analysts as well as entrepreneurs from the People's Republic of China.
At the joint stand of Montenegro and Serbia, the joint tourism offer is promoted by the organizations Fly Montenegro, Budva Tourist Organization, Montenegrin Tourist Service Travel Agency and Travel Europe Vip.
