The dark forebodings that numerous locals, civic activists, the media, and tourism workers warned about several decades ago have come true - Budva has suffered the fate of having its tourism industry defeated by an aggressive construction lobby.
The fact that the capital of Montenegrin tourism, the "Queen of the Mediterranean", is now experiencing its worst tourist season, worse than those during the war years in the former Yugoslavia, is primarily a consequence of uncontrolled housing construction that has "eaten up" its most attractive parts along the coast, agree the interlocutors of "Vijesti".
The construction lobby has practically won, and tourism is becoming more and more of a sideline. Millions of dollars in profits are being made in a business that not only manages to conquer the little remaining part of the Riviera with numerous projects, but has also largely entered politics and many other spheres of social life, dictating the vital processes of the city - the former main tourist mine of Montenegro, from which half of the total tourist traffic was drawn.
With disastrous planning documents that fulfilled the wishes of numerous investors close to the political elite, godfathers, friends, and locals, under the slogan "Budva as Monaco", the tourism metropolis was concreted.
Many construction projects are signed by drug gangs or cigarette smugglers, judging by the indictments filed by the Special State Prosecutor's Office in recent years...
And the story of a failed season, empty hotels, beaches, a narrative that is often used in the political war in which the opposition wants to accuse the current government of incompetence, testifies that neither one nor the other sees that they are jointly guilty. Because, while both sat or are sitting in the armchairs from which state tourism policies were and are being shaped over the past three decades, everyone applauded heartily as Budva was concreted, watching as the construction lobby rubbed its hands contentedly, extracting millions in profits, while members of drug clans and cigarette smugglers legalized dirty money.
Now we have the reality - in Budva, which according to the last census has 26.000 inhabitants, there are twice as many housing units. There are only about 20 beds in hotels, while private accommodation has at least five times as many, and no one has precise data.
Professor at the Faculty of Business and Tourism Rade Ratković points out for "Vijesti" that we are now witnessing the silent demise of tourism, which has been accelerating recently.
Ratković claims that the problem is housing construction, which practically took over, occupying the most significant tourist resources even before the 90s.
"Back then, we didn't have nearly as many apartments for the market as we do today, but there was a rapid increase in the number of rooms in private accommodation. This wouldn't have been a problem if small hotels were being built back then, but since they weren't - there were 'bare rooms', and that grew rapidly. Hotels stagnated, because state capital was no longer present in financing, foreigners couldn't come to invest because of our system. One refused, saying - 'if I buy something from you, it doesn't mean it's mine, it's yours'. There wouldn't have been a problem with housing construction if private catering was allowed, then hotels would be built instead of apartments and people would be employed," Ratković emphasizes.
WITH THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT, CONSTRUCTION WILL BE EVEN MORE HOT
According to him, after 1990, everything accelerated, mass construction of apartments for the market began because we lost the Western market due to the international community's assessment that the then FRY was to blame for the war in the former Yugoslavia.
"We were sanctioned, there were no foreign tourists, our guests came, as well as those who were looking for apartments, fleeing from the war-torn regions of the former Yugoslavia. And demand was created, the construction lobby had a great influence on urban planning, land prices skyrocketed, completely unrealistically, and a situation was created where it was not worth building a hotel, because there were no such prices anywhere. At that time, a square meter of land was paid for at a thousand former German marks, later 1.000 euros. The problem is that this is a constant and with the passage of time and changes of government, this problem only accelerates. People come to power with the story that it will stop, and then they start building even more and even more fiercely. We occupied the coast and now our most influential structure in tourism is apartments for the market, or secondary housing, and they determine the price policy in tourism," explains Ratković.
He assessed that hotels are now adapting to apartments so they can accommodate guests.
"After 2020, we completely neglected the Western European market, which played a significant role in Montenegrin tourism in 2019. That year, we had 35 percent of hotel guests from that market, there was a significant amount of organized tourism. Then we recorded a profit in tourism for the first time since 1990, from some 15 million euros it increased to 542 million euros. After that, losses only increased, in recent years we have constantly had losses in tourism, so many hoteliers are retraining, reorganizing - dividing rooms, renting out the restaurant to someone and turning it into apartments."
CLOSED SYSTEM
A citizen of Budva, one of the first civic activists to point out the problem of uncontrolled construction, former MP for the URA Party, Bozena Jelušić In an interview with "Vijesti", he points out that the price per square meter of an apartment is also evidence that the construction lobby has "eaten up" tourism.
"If we start from the fact that a square meter of a new apartment in Budva, depending on the location, is sold for 4.000 to 12.000 euros, it is clear that the construction lobby has 'eaten up' tourism. For comparison, a square meter of an excellent quality apartment in the prestigious Italian part of the Adriatic can easily be found for 1.000 euros. This clearly shows that this is not a market, but money laundering. Tourist facilities and leased beaches are often facades - entrances through which money, acquired in unknown ways, is inserted into legal flows, and then reinvested in construction. Thus, Budva functions as a closed system: money comes in, concrete is poured, space disappears... This situation did not arise overnight. It has its genesis and its culprits. It began after the devastating earthquake in 1979, when the 'plot for 30 percent of the built space' model was introduced, first applied in the Babin Do settlement. The collapse of Yugoslavia and the wars of the XNUMXs further accelerated migration and capital movements towards Montenegro. coast. In that vacuum, a hybrid system emerged: crony capitalism, corruption, political trade in space in cooperation with the profession that was supposed to protect it. Laws became decorum, legalization of the illegal rule. Then, after the restoration of independence, foreign capital poured massively and non-transparently into Montenegro.”
THE TARGET OF INTERESTS OF TWO “EMPIRES” - RUSSIA AND TURKEY
According to Jelušić, Budva was the first to become the target of the interests of two "empires" - first Russia, and now Turkey.
“Meanwhile, the demographic structure of Montenegro is collapsing, the population is dropping, but concrete is still emerging. The shell of the Budva Bay is almost exhausted today. In such a context, it is not surprising that a new term has entered the vocabulary of the urban planning profession - Budvanization. It denotes overbuilding, concreting, unsustainable planning, investor urbanism, permanent deterioration of the quality of life and destruction of the environmental heritage. And it is Budva, once the richest city of the former Yugoslavia along with Maribor, that is today an area in which it is increasingly difficult to live.”
He states that the statement by the relevant minister is "the height of absurdity". Slaven Radunović which proposes that citizens decide in a referendum whether Kotor should remain under UNESCO protection.
"It's like asking whether there should be historical memory, or whether the air should remain clean. If even international protection is not an obstacle to the rampage of investors - it is clear what the prospects are for Budva. Once a staunch critic of this state of affairs, from a position of power he readily continued in the footsteps of a former minister who said that 'Budva should be allowed to completely collapse'. Part of historical memory, however, is that there was civil resistance in Budva. From 1992 to 2013, the Society for a Better City operated, whose members - architects, lawyers, sociologists, journalists, doctors, professors and ordinary citizens - tried to stop the uncontrolled construction and protect the environmental whole. They demanded legality, transparency, participation. They warned that tourism can only survive with careful spatial planning. They fought with arguments and expertise. The archival materials I am currently sorting through document the chronicle of that resistance, unfortunately drowned out by the noise of concrete mixers."
Tourist facilities and rented beaches are often facades - entrances through which money, acquired in unknown ways, is injected into legal flows, and then reinvested in construction. Thus, Budva functions as a closed system: money comes in, concrete is poured, space disappears..., warns Božena Jelušić
PLAMENAC: A CONCRETE JUNGLE TO AVOID
A long-time journalist for the weekly "Monitor", the first to point out, at a time when the political elite and the construction lobby were in "full force", the cataclysm that awaits Budva with the adoption of controversial planning documents, to say the least. Branka Plamenac points out that in just 17 years Budva "changed its face, lost its visual identity and authenticity, everything it was known for to tourists around the world, and became a concrete jungle to avoid."
"It's too late now for regrets, incoherent analyses and criticisms," she tells "Vijesti".
She assessed that the sluggish tourist season and the so-called July hole have brought to the surface all the shortcomings, mistakes and wanderings of the state regarding the model and concept of tourism development:
“The drastic example of Budva, a leading tourist center, where almost half of the total tourist traffic is generated, shows how much the actions on the ground over the past years have been in complete contradiction with the decisions of governments and a series of strategies for the development of high-quality, sustainable tourism on the Montenegrin coast. Dreams and visions of Budva as an elite tourist destination have been shattered by the glass facades of Budva's skyscrapers that have occupied the precious coastal space along the Budva Riviera, its famous tourist resorts - Bečići, Pržno, Sveti Stefan and Petrovac.”
According to her, an unprecedented urban crime was committed in Budva in the name of profit, greed, and megalomania:
“A small coastal town with a Mediterranean spirit and special charm suddenly became a city of towers and skyscrapers, modeled after Vancouver, a coastal city in Canada, which was chosen as a model for the construction of Budva by planners from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. And our then-Government and its tourism ministers, together with the local administration of Budva, approved. There was also an offer on the table to shape Budva as a city of parks, or as a new Mediterranean center on the coast, but the then-executive government rejected such proposals in favor of a city of towers. Budva thus forever lost the chance to become a center of elite tourism. Sustainable development and similar platitudes promoted from the state level no longer apply to Budva. Budva became the 'queen' of mass tourism, precisely at the request of the decision-makers, the then-political elite who saw the concrete construction of an attractive coastal area as a chance for personal enrichment.”
GOVERNMENTS, LOCAL ADMINISTRATIONS AND CORRUPT PLANNERS GUILTY OF URBICIDE
Plamenac points out that there are many people to blame for the urbicide of Budva:
“The Government of Montenegro in the first place, its ministers, local administration, banks, corrupt planners, selected members of review committees, corrupt municipal urban planners, but also the citizens of Budva. All of them have made huge profits at the expense of the state, the city and tourism. Preparations for the devastation of the Budva Riviera began before the adoption of key planning documents. The most important investors, mostly well-known Montenegrin tycoons, prominent politicians and members of the construction lobby, bought up land plots in attractive locations within the scope of the future Detailed Urban Plan for the center of Budva. In October 2008, the DUP Budva-center was adopted, valid until 2013. Two and a half years later, the controversial plan that included the most important area of the tourist city, between the main road and the sea, the stretch from Avala to Zavala, had to be revised. The demands of the construction mafia in whose interests the plan was adopted, have grown in the meantime to the extent that the previously adopted dimensions, square footage and floors had to be increased several times. Amendments and supplements to the plan were made, which fulfilled all the wishes of the investors. And more than that. In Budva, the price per square meter was known, which was paid to planners and locals for entering the desired dimensions. DUP Budva-center - Amendments and supplements is a superb document of undisguised corruption and organized urban crime that is still being applied, although the validity of the plan has long expired.
Ivančević: Real estate defeated holiday tourism
A tourism worker for many decades, member of the Tourism and Hospitality Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, Dragan Purko Ivancevic was among the first, back in 1993, to warn in the Montenegrin parliament that a moratorium on construction should be introduced.
"I am not happy that everything that I warned about three decades ago has now come true. In 1993, I asked for some radical moves to be made and a moratorium on construction, because that was when the so-called construction of apartments for the market - real estate - first appeared. At that time, we saw that in the moments when the tourism industry of Montenegro was excommunicated from the tourist offer of Europe, we hoped that we would one day return and that our best chance would be if we preserved our spaces, to ensure the so-called sustainable development, to build hotel capacities in accordance with European standards, bearing in mind that this is our most important target group in tourism. And then the Minister of Tourism, architect Burzan, left that place at the moment when he wanted to bring about a moratorium. That was the last chance for real estate to be defeated by holiday tourism," Ivančević told "Vijesti".
As he points out, "from then until today, real estate has been leading with many differences compared to holiday tourism."
"We have come to the point where the most beautiful tourist sites have been valorized and destroyed for non-tourist purposes. We, who are in tourism, knew that we had no alternative and that one day we would have to lead this European competition, we demanded that the state adopt a tourism development strategy. A strategy that would clearly determine that Montenegro should have sustainable tourism, that holiday tourism should be dominant, that people should be employed, and that the construction of apartments for the market should be stopped, from which the state does not benefit, but only direct investors. Because, housing construction loses space, which is irreplaceable, because everything can be returned, only destroyed space never. So today we have come to a situation where we once again do not have a tourism development strategy and once again do not know how to protect these remaining sites and put them into operation on the principles of sustainable development."
Plamenac: Money laundering polygon
Plamenac points out that the Budva area has been turned into a money laundering training ground, for investing suspiciously acquired capital without any state control.
"The citizens of Budva had the opportunity to express their objections and demands to abandon aggressive urbanization at public hearings of the Draft Basic and Amended Plans, but almost all landowners within the scope of the plan requested larger building parameters for their plots. They all wanted more square meters, floors and apartments. Now they are complaining because their apartments and flats are half empty."
The Government of Montenegro in the first place, its ministers, local administration, banks, corrupt planners, selected members of review committees, corrupt municipal urban planners, but also the citizens of Budva. They all made huge profits at the expense of the state, the city and tourism, says journalist Branka Plamenac
She assessed that the planners had forgotten that the city is not just made up of apartments and skyscrapers.
“Budva lacks a new city center with a theater, galleries, cinemas, a promenade, parks, good restaurants... There is nothing in the city that would keep and animate tourists, for whom the cluttered ugly buildings, crowded beaches, traffic jams, noise, and dirt are no longer a motive for staying in an environment without a soul and tourist charm. Rich tourists no longer come to Budva, they choose Tivat, Luštica, Kotor, Perast, or Herceg Novi, smaller tourist resorts that offer different types of vacations, luxury marinas, boutique hotels, villas with gardens and swimming pools, smaller natural beaches, elegant restaurants, and a rich cultural heritage.”
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