Director of the Business Association of Hotel and Catering Industry of Serbia (HORES) Georgi Genov said today that it is difficult to estimate the real losses in the tourism and catering sector, but that it could be said that they could exceed two billion euros by the end of the year.
At GIZ’s online conference “Impact and ways of overcoming the crisis in the tourism sector caused by the COVID-19 pandemic”, Genov estimated that about 45% of the workforce left the hotel and catering industry.
According to him, the measures adopted by the Government of Serbia to help that sector helped a lot to prevent layoffs, but that local governments did not have an understanding for the crisis caused by the pandemic.
“There are a small number of them who came out to meet the catering facilities with concrete proposals on how to help the sector,” said Genov.
He stated that public companies did not have understanding and that they charge for their communal services according to the regular regime.
Speaking about the project implemented by GIZ “#EUzaTebe – for cultural heritage and tourism”, Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Renata Pinjo, said that the project before the pandemic was extremely important for the development of tourism in Serbia.
“In addition to the funds from the IPA fund of 15 million euros, the German government has set aside an additional 1.6 million euros for this project, as well as funds for repairing the damage caused by the pandemic,” said Pinjo.
She added that in the first eight months of 2020, about 48.6 percent of tourist arrivals were realized in relation to the total arrivals in 2019, which speaks of the losses of this sector, which are large.
“In order to repair the consequences of the pandemic, the Government has so far paid 75 million euros to the catering sector through the minimums, while the minimums for tourism amounted to about 7 million euros,” said Pinjo.
She added that sectoral measures followed after that, and one of them is for hoteliers in terms of the number of beds, with a total value of 10 million euros.
“About 1.25 million euros have been set aside for insurance policies and bank guarantees for travel agencies,” said Pinjo.
The representative of the project “#EUzaTebe – for cultural heritage and tourism” Aleksandar Bec pointed out that the pandemic is a great challenge, especially for those who work in tourism.
“Tourism is one of the economic branches that has huge losses due to the pandemic, which is why we have allocated one million euros through this project to eliminate the consequences of the crisis,” said Vienna.
He pointed out that the project invests a lot in the protection of cultural monuments and that it is important that there is a possibility of developing concepts and ideas on how to improve tourism in Serbia, Kamatica reports.
