Decaying symbols: Hotels are empty, but they could work

From the end of 2016 until today, Montenegro got forty new hotels, mostly on the coast, while the existing ones in the cities of the central and northern part of the country are mostly closed, demolished or operate with reduced capacities.

These hotels used to be symbols of small towns, as their names say - Piva in Plužine, Zeta in Danilovgrad, Planinka in Žabljak. All three are privatized, and although we record an increasing number of tourists from season to season, they have not opened their doors for years.

Hotel Piva ceased operations in 2011. In 2012, it was bought by the Budva Riviera, and since then these doors have been closed.

The President of the Municipality Mijuško Bajagić believed that then Plužine would get a representative facility, as it once was, and today he suspects that Budvanska Riviera bought the Piva Hotel under pressure from the Government in order to solve the problem of around 140 employees.

"The 300 paid out by the Budva Riviera was not a lot of money, but they solved the problem with the workers. The development of tourism in any municipality, if there are no good hotels and accommodation facilities, cannot be expected to be at the level it should be." , says Bajagić.

The fact that the Piva hotel has not been operating for years is a big problem for the people of Piv.

"We don't have weddings, celebrations, any major events, or graduation days here. Our guys, although rarely, get married in Nikšić and other rented facilities, even though this facility has a capacity of over 200 guests," Mirko points out. Vuković, councilor in Plužine Municipal Council.

From the Budva Riviera, they say that by purchasing a hotel, they had the idea to connect the offer of the south and the north, and that they were prevented from doing so by investing in five hotels on the coast.

"In the previous period, the management of the Group made an effort to find the best solution and a model that would in some way put this hotel into operation and thus contribute to the development of Plužine. The hotel group on two occasions called for tenders for the sale of the hotel, in which there were no interested buyers ", they say from the Budva Riviera.

Even the former employees of the Piva Hotel believed that, with the arrival of the Budva Riviera, the hotel would work.

"The hotel used to work, employing 140 workers. It was always full like all our facilities, but there were also companies working around it. I think the hotel would still work well today," says Milomir Doderović.

Hotel Zeta is also a big problem for Danilovgrad. It was closed in 2005, privatized a year later, and the last owner is Milorad Skrobanović from Podgorica.

"I got in touch with the owner who bought the Zeta hotel. In the coming days, I will have a meeting with him to define, make an agreement and to inform the Assembly whether he intends to invest or not so that they know what to do, because this situation is the black spot of Danilovgrad," says the President of the Municipality, Zorica Kovačević.

The newly elected president of Danilovgrad believes that the hotel, which is passed by a large number of tourists on their way to Ostrog and Ždrebaonik every day, can operate.

The former symbol of Žabljak, the Hotel Planinka, shares a similar fate with Piva and Zeta, which has not opened its doors to tourists for the second summer season in a row, and the owner of HTP Primorje from Tivat has not yet started the long-announced reconstruction.