The Canton Sarajevo (CS) Tourist Board and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) presented yesterday in the Sarajevo City Hall the “Joint Plan for the Implementation of the Recovery and Development of Tourism in the CS”.
Given that CS records the largest number of arrivals and overnight stays in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the goal of this plan is the cooperation between USAID and the CS Tourist Board.
Kenan Magoda from the Tourist Board of CS pointed out the important acceleration of the recovery of tourism and the return to the pre-pandemic level.
“The CS Tourist Board together with the CS Government and the Ministry of Economy, led by Minister Adnan Delic, strategically wants to develop tourism and thus tourism as an economic branch in this Canton. It is important that the Tourist Board recognizes USAID tourism as an extremely important strategic partner in creating strategy and getting out of this state in which tourism is at the moment, ” he stated.
Also, he added that the time has come to work on creating a marketing plan and to put localities such as Bjelasnica and Trebevic, as well as picnic areas near Sarajevo where theybelong.
“The most important thing is cooperation with local self-government and the promotion of all projects on which we will work. The CS Tourist Board has focused a serious marketing budget on digital media abroad and the region. Also, in cooperation with ZOI’84 we will work on forming a winter calendar of events at Bjelasnica, Igman, Trebevic, in order to have a precise schedule of activities and events for each day this year, ” he added.
He further emphasized that this will show what all these mountains offer, and also the quality of service will be presented because a positive image and promotion are very important.
“Apart from all these strategic goals, it is very important that we form offers for the upcoming season. Promotional prices of hotel accommodation, ski ticket prices, as well as quality trails will be offered,” he said.
Ibrahim Osta from USAID expressed his satisfaction that they were in a building such as the City Hall.
“We are talking about sustainable tourism and the need to make progress, but also to protect nature. Kenan spoke about his vision of establishing a more efficient tourist board with the general progress of CS, and thus BiH. In July, Sarajevo hosted 60 percent of tourists who came to BiH. Namely, the Federation of BiH (FBiH) hosts 70 percent of international arrivals and overnight stays in BiH, ” he noted.
Osta emphasized that when they established a partnership with the ministries and the tourist board, they were in a very unfavorable situation since tourism was affected by the pandemic, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.