Bosnia’s Mostar Airport Aims for Expansion

Mostar airport has announced that Italian airline Meridiana will run direct flights to Milan from April to September this year, while Mistral Air will reactivate its connections to Bari and Napoli and is also preparing to launch other destinations including Rome.

Mostar is hoping to become a hub for travellers heading for the nearby Catholic pilgrimage site of Medjugorje, which attracts over a million visitors each year, although most of them currently fly in to airports in Croatian coastal towns.

“The airport has potential but it needs investment,” Marko Djuzel of Mostar Airport told Balkan Insight.

The EU delegation to Bosnia said last week that there was a need for joint action to develop a plan for the future, citing its own studies that suggest that the airport has the potential to attract as many as 1.8 million passengers annually within a 30-year period.

“This growth is mainly based on projections on growth in tourism to nearby Medjugorje,” the EU delegation said in a statement.

The delegation said that the growth of the airport, which currently handles less than 100,000 passengers a year, would directly benefit restaurants, hotels and other tourist venues, and have a profound impact on the socio-economic outlook of the Herzegovina region.

“Experts estimated that some 2,000 new jobs could be created in the region if the growth is realised,” the statement said.

“The experts also assess that if Mostar does not move to capitalise on this potential within the next couple of years, the window of opportunity will close, leaving airports in neighbouring countries to capitalise on Medjugorje’s success,” it added.

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