Today, on September 20, 2023, at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel in Ljubljana, the Tourist Organization of Novi Sad organized a business event that brought together representatives from the tourism industry in Novi Sad and Slovenia. Local hoteliers and agencies had the opportunity to hold meetings and discuss new business opportunities, all with the aim of increasing the number of tourists traveling between Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Novi Sad.
The goal of TONS was to strengthen and enhance the existing good cooperation with colleagues from Slovenia, and inevitably, this meeting will contribute to the development of both tourist destinations.
Before the B2B meetings, the consul of the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Slovenia, Milinko Špica, the deputy director of Tourism Ljubljana, Mitja Predovnik, the acting head of the City Administration for Economy, Saša Bilinović, and the director of the Tourist Organization of Novi Sad, Branislav Knežević, addressed all attendees.
Tourist attractions in Novi Sad and Serbia were presented through promotional videos, and the meeting was attended by representatives from the Tourist Organization of Serbia, the Tourist Organization of Vojvodina, and the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia – Regional Chamber of Commerce of the South Bačka Administrative District.
Data from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia show that in 2022, nearly 220,000 tourists stayed in Novi Sad, generating over 560,000 overnight stays, breaking the record set in 2019. In the first six months of this year, according to the same source, Novi Sad was visited by more than 110,000 tourists, who recorded 274,771 overnight stays, continuing the growth trend.
In the past year alone, nearly 10,000 tourists from Slovenia visited our city, placing them in the fourth position in terms of the country of origin of tourists, right after visitors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the Russian Federation. On the other hand, the number of overnight stays by Slovenian tourists in Novi Sad last year was 21,345.
These data indicated to us that, as a leader in the tourism industry of the city, we should focus on attracting tourists and businesses from Slovenia, which, as we have seen, represent an important segment in the tourism sense. The meeting, along with the ongoing promotion, provides a good platform for achieving this goal.
