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The turnover of travel agencies dropped by more than 90 percent in Serbia

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Travel agencies and car rental companies in Serbia are celebrating today’s World Tourism Day in a catastrophic situation, because in 2020, losses of more than 100 million euros were recorded in this sector, and the drop in turnover exceeded 90 percent, the director of the National Association told Tanjug of Tourist Agencies of Serbia (JUTA) Aleksandar Senicic.
According to him, the situation in this area is so dramatic that if there is no help from the state, there is a real fear that travel agencies and car rental companies will have to lay off their employees at the end of October, by the time the basic government assistance program the workers are retained.
He says that some other segments of the tourism industry, such as the hotel industry, have been helped, but that “the state has not recognized” agencies and car rental companies.
Senicic states as an additional problem that on October 1, travel agencies expire their work licenses, and in order to be able to apply for new ones, by law they must have a travel guarantee that can be obtained either as an insurance policy or a bank guarantee.
“Since the bank guarantee is impossible, practically only the insurance policy remains, and the insurers informed us within 12 minutes that they were leaving this business, because we are too risky and this year the policies will not be issued to us. Since the government is technical and now neither laws nor bylaws can be changed, there is no way to resolve the situation regarding travel guarantees, we will not have a tour operator from October 1 and there will be no one to organize trips,” Senicic states.
He points out that the citizens who have already paid for the trips should not be afraid, because those trips are covered by the previous guarantees, and that the problem refers only to new trips, which there will be no one to organize.
Senicic does not dare to predict when the situation could improve and what it could be like next year, because, as he says, it will mostly depend on the epidemiological situation.
According to him, travel agencies would easily return to normal work flows, but that does not depend on them.
“In the next one, the Ministry of Tourism will insist on assistance regarding bilateral agreements with the most important tourist destinations such as Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, and Turkey in the sense that the money of Serbian citizens paid to our partners is used in the best possible way. Travel protocols should be agreed in advance, even if the situation with the pandemic is as bad as it was this year,” Senicic explains, Nova reports.

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