FBiH Prime Minister Fadil Novalić and Minister of Environment and Tourism Edita Đapo presented the Tourism Development Strategy of the Federation of BiH for the period 2022 to 2027 on the occasion of World Tourism Day.
Four priorities have been defined: development of tourist products, destination marketing, human resources, and improvement of the stimulating environment for the development of sustainable tourism.
“I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the actors who participated in creating this strategy and I think that everyone did a good job. I also want to congratulate the team from the FBiH Ministry of Environment and Tourism, as well as all partners at the level of the Federation and all cantons, as well as USAID, tourism boards, cities, municipalities, and everyone who contributed to this project. This is a strategic platform for directing our rich tourism potential and it is an extremely important link in the chain of establishing a stronger and more functional generator of tourism development, and therefore of the BiH economy,” said Prime Minister Novalić.
He said that the Tourism Development Strategy is another contribution to the continuation of support for tourism entrepreneurship in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“In the strategy, we will allocate five million KM for next year, and seven million KM in 2024 for strengthening of tourist potential and promotion of our destinations and attractions,” Novalić added.
FBiH Minister of Environment and Tourism Edita Đapo emphasized that today we celebrate World Tourism Day under the theme “Rethinking Tourism”.
“The theme corresponds to the situation in which tourism is at the moment, but also that it was most affected during coronavirus. We supported tourism through different ways of the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We supported tourism to move forward in this post-corona period and allocated 30 million KM for that. We look at tourism differently now and we learned a lot from the period of coronavirus, therefore we started using new technologies and we saw the advantages of these new technologies and communication. This is exactly one of the items that we included in our FBiH Tourism Development Strategy,” said Đapo.
She sees the development of tourist products as a priority in tourism, followed by human resources as one of the basic priorities because the most important resources in every branch, and especially in tourism, are human resources.
President of the Association of Tourist Entrepreneurs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Senad Halilović, also attended the presentation of the Strategy and stated that he expects 1,800,000 to 2,000,000 overnight stays to be reached this year.
World Tourism Day has been held on 27 September each year since 1980 under the auspices of the UN World Tourism Organization. This day is celebrated to strengthen awareness of the social, cultural, political, and economic values of tourism, and to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development goals.
