Season of maturity

In fact, it is not only about the fluctuation from certain distant emissive markets, but also about the escalation of prices of oil derivatives, which if continued is definitely going to affect the price of tourist arrangements, but also the price of hospitality/catering services.

This is why I am going to go back to some basic economic and marketing postulates. Let’s remind ourselves, basic marketing instruments are: product, price, promotion and distribution.

Therefore, the first premise of competitiveness of a tourist product is its pricing sustainability from the point of view of providers and pricing acceptability from the point of view of consumers.

The first test of adequate price differentiation is whether the product is going to be promoted successfully, then also distributed, which consequently leads to financial and quantitative indicators in the domain of occupancy of the facilities and of the profitability of tourist entities.

In order to have adequate measurement, it is necessary to address the issue of measurability, and/or comparability, or in contemporary sense - benchmarking.

For some years now, I have been speaking about the necessity of price correction in service-related activities solely on the basis of input unit correction, but not on the basis of raising unit profit, which our Mediterranean competitors have figured out long ago.

Let’s compare inflation parameters for 2025. Total inflation rate, measured by the consumer price index in the stated year was 3.9%. Average inflation rate at the EU level in 2025 was 2.0%, and in case of destinations of our competitors: Italy 1.2%, Spain 3.0%, Greece 2.9%, Portugal 2.4%, etc… Only Croatia was at the similar level – 3.8%.

When it comes to tourism (according to the official data in the restaurant and hotel sector), inflation rate was 7.5%, while in the EU inflation rate in this sector was 4.0%.

With regards to price escalation, special attention has to paid to income vulnerability of the regional markets, but also to the air and road accessibility in relation to the same.

For instance, in 2025 Croatia had 60.568 arrivals and 224.351 overnight stays from the market of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also 22.571 arrivals and 199.298 overnight stays from Serbian market.

Then also, there has been a constant discussion in the public discourse as to whether concession is a better option for the airports to internal investments. I am always in favour of internal investments, if at all possible, which in our case I deem possible, in combination with the EU funds and the experience of the actual management in using the same. However, I think that this is never a key topic when it comes to airport management, but the know-how.

I’ll mention several examples from our immediate neighbourhood. Dubrovnik (speaking about the above model) recorded 3,090,245 passenger arrivals, which is an increase of 4.5% or 135.311 passengers, then Sarajevo (the airport which is not under concession) with 2.226.692 passengers, which is as much as 22% or 404.930 passengers more than in 2024. There is also a counter-example of Priština Airport which under concession recorded 4.600.484 passengers (slightly less than Zagreb), with the increase of over half a million passengers in relation to the preceding year.

As regards 2026, it should be said that Montenegrin airports have made a progress towards the emissive markets where there is room for market growth, primarily when it comes to Western European, Scandinavian and Central-European markets. However, this is going to be seriously affected if the construction of Jaz-Tivat boulevard gets additionally prolonged, since the first Western-European guests are expected already at the beginning of April, i.e. during Easter holiday.

To sum it up, Montenegro has to show maturity this year, be it in the price profiling, development of road infrastructure and promotion of the safety of destination and the transfer to the same.