Fans of active holidays, who represent the main target group when it comes to tourism in the mountain regions of Montenegro, use maps for orientation on the terrain, and especially modern technologies such as mobile phone applications or GPS devices. There are very few printed maps available; it is necessary to specifically visit a tourist organization to obtain a map, and hikers or cyclists do not like to carry too many things with them, while these maps often do not even include all the data regarding hiking or biking trails. Therefore, tourists prefer reliable electronic maps and the use of GPS logs for orientation in the field. This is especially true because physical signaling (signposts) on our trails is very often devastated, making it highly unreliable.

When it comes to Montenegro, electronic maps such as Google Maps or Open Street Maps were poorly detailed, and most of the entered data concerned urban zones, which are of the least interest to outdoor tourists. Google and Open Street maps are used as a base in almost all navigation applications, so the importance of entering as much data as possible into these maps is of enormous significance for the development of mountain tourism in Montenegro.

It was a great pleasure for us to see that a group of enthusiasts gathered around the portal www.pedalaj.me and the outdoor club The Northern Way, invested enormous time and effort to transfer thousands of data points into Open Street Maps, making the region of Bjelasica, Komovi, and Prokletije far more accessible to any visitor. These maps now include main, local, and village roads; all places, villages, and katuns are marked; springs and viewpoints are identified; marked and many unmarked hiking and biking trails are included, as well as numerous other attractions and service providers in the field of tourism. If you look at the maps, you will see that when it comes to the abundance of information, this region now does not lag behind developed countries that completed this task long before us. We would be glad to see other parts of Montenegro processed in a similar way.

At this link, you can read the original text about this volunteer project. The collected data is still being entered, and the scope of work is expanding to other municipalities outside the region.

As we are an organization actively involved in the development of the tourist offer in this region, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who worked dedicatedly on the maps, partly because Open Street Maps are free to use, can be printed, modified, and used for various purposes regarding tourism promotion. We warmly recommend to all other tourism workers to use these maps in all their activities concerning online promotion, app development, as well as printed material, because we have seen for ourselves the precision of the entered data. And to the tourists, we say that orientation in our region is finally possible without relying on physical signaling.