The largest number of participants to date – over 150 hoteliers from around 60 hotels and representatives of the hotel and tourism industries, respectable guests from the UK, Switzerland, Croatia, panelists from elite hotel chains, local and international – gathered at the 8th Forum of Hoteliers with international participation, which was successfully held on November 1st 2016 in the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia in Belgrade, organized by the magazine “Touristic World” and the Association for Tourism PKS, sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications.
The reason for the unusually large interest of the Forum’s participants were the respectable panelists, as well as the attractive panels that discussed the influence of improving destination quality on the quality of hotel offers – and vice versa, about the necessity of revenue management in the modern hotel industry.
The dean of the Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management of Singidunum University, Prof. Dr. Slobodan Čerović, officially opened the forum, while the organizers of this event – the secretary of the Association for Tourism PKS, Dragana Šabić, and the editor of the magazine “Touristic World”, Ljiljana Rebronja, welcomed all the participants in their introductory speeches.
Destination development and education
The participants of the panel on improving destination quality led by Jelena Đaković confirmed that hotels and attractive manifestations can truly influence the quality of a certain destination. At this panel, among others, the PR and marketing manager of “A Hotel” Vesna Vlatković, mentioned the hotel “Izvor” in Aranđelovac as a positive example for increasing the number of tourists in this town by an incredible 549 percent during its first year! In any case, as Dejan Veselinov, the keynote speaker on this topic pointed out, the development of a tourist destination is influenced by all the stakeholders together, because it is exclusively in their interest.