With the new Law on Tourism and Hospitality, the proposal of which was recently established by the Government, ambiguities from the previous legal solution that occurred in practice will be corrected, which used to cause unequal application and led to redundant and unnecessary administration.
The intention of the Ministry of Tourism, as stated in the regulatory impact assessment report, is to enable faster and easier exercise of the rights of tourism and hospitality service providers through the new legal text. In addition, this regulation also transposes the European directive from 2015.
The department led by Simonida Kordić expects that this law will simplify the procedures for issuing decisions on categorization and conducting hospitality activities, digitalize the work process, and eliminate illegal business operations.
Agritourism
The legal changes largely relate to travel agencies, but the concept of agritourism has also been fully elaborated, something that associations dealing with rural tourism have been pointing out for years.
The Director of the Regional Development Agency for Bjelasica, Komovi, and Prokletije, Jelena Krivčević, sees this as a positive change, bearing in mind that this will introduce agritourism into strategic documents that will further elaborate measures and criteria for this sector.
“We must start clearing out everything that does not belong to rural tourism, because over recent years, many things have been classified into this category that are fundamentally not agritourism,” Krivčević told Pobjeda.
Nevertheless, she assesses that additional obligations are being imposed on rural households once again, putting farmers, for whom tourism is a supplementary activity, in an awkward position.
“We fought to create the possibility of introducing tasting rooms into the law, featuring products predominantly from one’s own production. This is indeed legally foreseen, but rural households are again not allowed to essentially have just tasting rooms; instead, accommodation remains mandatory, along with a new addition of organizing craft, artistic, and workshops for preparing domestic products,” Krivčević states.
Gordana Stevović, a member of the Management Board of the Association of Rural Households – Tourism in the Village, emphasizes that the holders of these households are farmers for whom agritourism is an additional activity and that, considering these are mostly family businesses, they do not have enough staff or skills to organize these workshops as well.
“Since 2018, we have held meetings with all political sets in the Ministry of Tourism regarding this article, requesting that households be allowed to primarily offer food, as it is key in rural tourism, and that they can offer accommodation only if they wish to do so themselves, rather than making it an obligation,” Stevović explains.
A Futile Fight
However, as Krivčević adds, that fight was obviously futile, because this legislative proposal prescribes yet another additional condition. They are concerned, she adds, that if the law is interpreted the same way as the previous one, it will be an additional obstacle to the development of rural households.
“Today, the result is such that not only are they not allowed to choose whether, alongside food, they want to provide accommodation, but they are obliged to organize workshops on top of all that,” says Krivčević.
As Krivčević and Stevović emphasize, they have sent a request to the Ministry of Tourism for an additional interpretation of this article. Depending on the response, they add, they also plan to address the parliamentary Committee on Tourism, Hospitality, and Agriculture with a request to participate in the session where this draft law will be discussed.
Krivčević sees no reason why hospitality services in rural households should be treated differently from services at shellfish farms.
“We believe there is absolutely no need to differentiate from shellfish farms, because for them, the law prescribes that they can, but do not have to, provide accommodation alongside serving food from their own farm. We think we are the same category and that the possibility of choice should be given to rural households as well,” states Krivčević, adding that otherwise, a significant number of people who are excellent producers are being “suffocated.”
Bungalows Contrary to Tradition
Pobjeda’s interlocutors also point out that during the public debate, they requested the removal of bungalows as a type of facility from the law.
“Today we see a ‘bungalization’ happening, especially in the north. These are structures that are completely contrary to our tradition; the space is being degraded by the construction of the so-called A-frame houses instead of promoting rural buildings. We assessed that it is better to foresee log cabins or cottages, which are recognized by the law, and exclude bungalows which imply a set of identical houses being built across the north,” said Krivčević.
Stevović emphasizes that rural tourism is the only example of sustainable and regenerative tourism in Montenegro.
“Yet, there is no mention in the law about the importance of the sector in that context, which is necessary in order to channel it even better in the future and to define support measures in that direction. This is a jewel in the crown of Montenegrin tourism, but it seems to me that they are not yet sufficiently aware of it,” Stevović concludes.
The report from the public debate states that the Ministry of Tourism did not accept the objection of these associations that rural households should be exempted from the obligation of categorization, assessing that it is a matter of ensuring service quality standards. The associations evaluated that the law is discriminatory in this part towards rural households that have small capacities and turnovers, pointing out that tourism is a complementary activity alongside their primary, agricultural one.
This legislative proposal has not yet entered the parliamentary procedure.
