Montenegro Eyes Record-Breaking Tourism Season

The number of overnight stays was 5.3 per cent higher than in June 2017.

More than 91.3 per cent of these tourists were from the region, Western Europe and Scandinavia.

Visitors from Russia and Serbia still top the list, however, responsible for 17.7 and 13 per cent of the total number of foreign tourists.

The tourism organization in the popular resort of Budva on Tuesday said 60,000 tourists are currently registered in the town, which is 3 per cent more than in the same period last year.

Most tourists in Budva expectedly come from Russia and Serbia, but the local tourism organization reports an increase in the number of tourists from Turkey and neighbouring Croatia.

According to data presented by the Tourism Ministry on Monday, from the beginning of the year, nearly 170,000 tourists had visited Montenegro's coast and mountain resorts.

Tourism Minister Pavle Radulovic said that government data showed a 22-per-cent rise in arrivals and earnings compared to last year.

"The structure of guests is also changing. All the growth we have actually is guests from the Western European market - while the number of traditional guests from the region and from Russia is somewhere on the same level," Radulovic told Serbia's Tanjug news agency on Monday.

About one-third of guests come from Western Europe but more were now coming from China and the Gulf countries, the minister said.

"We have recorded a serious rise, and tourists from these [countries] keep coming," he added.
Radulovic also explained that the money inflow from tourism could be more than a billion euros this year, which he called a "spectacular result".

"We have already exceeded 1987, which was a record year, and are slowly moving towards a new record,"...