Terrorist Threats Damage Tourism in Bosnia
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Professionals in the tourist sector in Bosnia fear that the recent fall in visitor numbers may be due to the fact that international media increasingly link Bosnia and Herzegovina to the phenomenon of international terrorism and the Islamic State, ISIS.
According to data from the Tourism Community of the Canton Sarajevo, in January 2016 the number of foreign tourists fell by 17.5 per cent compared to the same month in the previous year. They say a similar drop will be confirmed for February.
Although the grim result also reflects poor winter weather, which discouraged many from coming to Sarajevo, another factor behind the trend is reports of terrorist threats in Bosnia, Asja Hadziefendic-Mesic, of the Tourism Community of the Canton Sarajevo, told BIRN on Wednesday.
“At the end of 2015, we had two events that had a huge negative impact on our country’s image, the attack in Rajlovac and the arrest of 11 persons suspected of planning a bomb attack on New Year’s Eve in Sarajevo,” Hadziefendic-Mesic said.
“Many tourists decided to cancel the trips and reservations they had already booked as a consequence,” she added.
On November 18, Enes Omeragic, a Sarajevo resident, shot dead two soldiers in the neighbourhood of Rajlovac, in an attack that the authorities qualified as a terrorist act.
Only weeks later, on December 22, Bosnian police arrested 11 persons on suspicion of preparing a bomb attack on New Year’s Eve in Sarajevo.
According to Hadziefendic-Mesic, the growing alarm about terrorist threats in Bosnia has especially impacted on tourists from Croatia, which is the top country in terms of the number of tourists visiting Bosnia.
“The number of Croats visiting Bosnia in January 2016 almost halved compared to January 2015”, Hadziefendic-Mesic said, noting that “media from the region, especially from Croatia and Serbia, contributed to raising an alarm about the security situation in our country.”
According to Hadziefendic-Mesic, security concerns may inflict major damage on tourism in the Bosnian capital, which became one of the region’s main tourist destinations in recent years.
However, professionals operating in the sector told BIRN that they remain optimist.
“We think that the poor results of the first two months were mostly due to the bad weather,” Elvis Cehajic, from Relax Tours, a tourist agency operating in Sarajevo, told BIRN on Wednesday.
“Terrorism threats so far have not hugely impacted on our business, as happened, for instance, with the catastrophic floods of 2014,” Cehajic added.
“We expect that this season will be even more successful than the previous one,” he concluded.
