30 percent of arrivals from Turkey cancelled in March!

A large number of Turks have cancelled their planned arrival in Bosnia and Herzegovina in March this year due to political turmoil and demonstrations, the BH news agency Patria (NAP) has learned. There is great interest in Turkey regarding events in BiH, and there are also a large number of media outlets reporting up-to-date news. However, tourism workers point out that they have already felt the negative consequences of demonstrations and instability.

As confirmed to NAP by Sanela Karčić from the travel agency „Balkan Tour“, as many as 30 percent of announced tourist groups from Turkey, whose tourists were the most numerous in Sarajevo last year, have cancelled their planned visits to BiH in March this year. The economic damage from these cancellations will only be known at the end of the first quarter.

- So far, we have 30 percent of cancelled groups that were supposed to visit BiH. And, as a travel agency, we agree that the demonstrations have negatively affected the image of tourism, as well as BiH itself – Karčić told NAP.

According to data from the Tourist Board of Sarajevo Canton, the number of tourists increased last year. The highest number of arrivals in Sarajevo Canton were from Turkey (17.3 percent), Croatia (16.7 percent), Slovenia (7.0 percent), Serbia (4.9 percent), Germany (3.7 percent), Italy, South Korea, Austria, USA, and Poland.