Tourism in heavy condition, State Assistance Required

Kosovo Tourism Union Chairman Bucky Hoti, in an interview for KosovoPress, has said that the pandemic in 2020 has blocked all tourism sector activities and that Kosovo Government has done nothing to help this sector, which is the main pillar of Kosovo's economy.

<x) The institutions have not been supportive of this despite insistences in this sector, meetings, discussions, debates, demands the union has made, we still have no concrete on what is required by the tourism community, given that tourism is one of the main pillars of this country's” economy, Hoti has said.

Hoti has said that the aid allocated to workers and businesses is insufficient for the tourism sector, as concrete packages are needed that would help businesses with the easy handling of pandemic.

He wants the Kosovo government to help more tourism because of the poor situation in which this sector is located.

There has not been enough help there must be concrete packages. The concrete budget line, which will show what will help the business community because hotels, gastronomics, transport, guidas and other activities are involved in this sector. Tourism is one of the main pillars of this country and institutions, but even the government must finally turn its attention to tourism and assess and know the role of tourism. It's time for institutions to help tourism because it's in bad shape... It's sad if you find a hotel with 60-70 rooms in the middle of the capital today and find it locked. This is too much damage”, Hoti said.

Tourist Agency Director Globus Travel Kosova, noble Dragusha, has said that Kosovo does not have the Ministry of Tourism, but no law to deal with the problems of this sector.

He says that during the pandemic, they haven't worked, a pocket that has affected the decline in planned development capacities in the following year.

“Tourism has been the most unhelpable sector in terms of economic recovery, as there has been no statistics about how much this sector has been hurt and without the ministry, the department organised at the right level has been left behind like the sector. The fall has been enormous. 70 percent of the planned capacity has not been accomplished, and this has affected the financial impact of the company, having had to be exacerbated by customers, as well as those we have booked and postponed for the following year, the profit is lost within that box”, Dragusha said.

He has asked the Kosovo government to ensure that banks remove this sector from the blacklist, but also to share subsidies.

Our <x0 resource requirements would be more stable planning, which explains much better in the next six months what plans will be undertaken and a assistance in the approach of finance to banks by asking banks to remove tourism from blacklists and ensure that the tourism sector is likely to receive financial support and a subsidy which had been worth 4 million euros, would take out the sector in a completely different position in terms of tourist agencies and a certain number of hotels that have been owned and foreign tourists have been damaged, 201, while preserving jobs at once, but also saving the image of the operation and all of the license, Dragza said.

Otherwise, the Tourism Union in Kosovo, during the time of pandemic, has tried to help the tourism community, where they have managed to sign three international agreements and 19 different agreements, with various institutions that, with the passage of pandemic, are ready to implement them.

Another agreement during this time is the international agreement that has been made with Albania's Tourism Union, where two activities are held under the agreement.